Our culture’s wholesale abandonment of biblical ethics in matters of sexuality — what I have recently called pomosexuality — is the direct and immediate result of a failure of the Church to proclaim and live out life in Christ, life in the gospel, life in the triune God. So the way out of this impasse …
Scripture in Debates, Scripture on Debates
Last Friday I debated atheist Eddie Tabash at the SUB ballroom at the University of Idaho, and I was certainly pleased at how the evening went. I had debated him once before, six years ago, and would particularly like to thank Eddie for his personal cordiality — in both our debates. The Monday before that, …
With Both of Us Holding Back
It was recently brought to my attention that Gary North was asked about New St. Andrews College, and he replied in a characteristically exuberant fashion to the effect that all classical Christian education was simply refried paganism, and that Christian parents were foolish to have anything to do with it. Believing this to represent a …
Small Immensities
“The processes involved in sauce making are hardly as dramatic as the driving of great engines, but they testify no less to the brooding of the Spirit upon the face of creation, to the endless speaking of the Word Who mightily and sweetly orders all things. Unfortunately, we live in an age which is too …
Despite an Occasional Verbal Flourish
The second part of Hart’s book is his positive statement of “Divine Victory.” The first section of this second half sets the pieces on the board for us. “To behave or live according to nature is for some of us the very definition of sagacity, sanity, or even virtue” (p. 45). This is what the …
Eucatastrophe at the Eschaton
The fifth section of The Doors of the Sea contains Hart’s central concerns with inadequate Christian theodicies (as he considers them), and is the section where he showcases Ivan Karamazov’s rebellion against God. “This is the splendid perversity and genius of Ivan’s (or Dostoyevsky’s) argument, which makes it indeed the argument of a rebel rather …
John Wesley’s Hatband
In the second section of his first chapter, Hart takes “emotional and rhetorical opportunism” to task, and does so ably. He is not fond of the “triumphalistic atheist” who declares immediately that the “materialist creed has been vindicated” (p. 7) by natural disasters such as the Asian tsunami. “But the alacrity with which some seize …
Denying the Cat
The Doors of the Sea is a small book, divided into two chapters — “Universal Harmony” and “Divine Victory.” Each chapter is divided into sections, and I want to interact with the book section by section. In this book, David Bentley Hart grapples with the Asian tsunami and the problem of natural evil. I don’t …
Why the Horse Isn’t Dead
I have mentioned before the atheism jag that I have been on, and even if I hadn’t mentioned it, it would have been obvious. Just last week I posted covers of some of the new titles coming out. One thought that has occurred to me is that a number of Christians may be thinking, “For …
Can’t Tell the Players Without a Scorecard
Over the next few months, you will hear a goodish bit about all of these, four small books which have been the result of debating-the-atheists jag. Because I have already had to explain various confusions about which was what, I thought I should mention everything here, straight in a row. Sam Harris wrote a bestseller …