Over at First Things, Peter Leithart interacts with a 2010 article by natural law theorist Jean Porter. At issue was the question of whether or not natural law provides a basis for rejecting same-sex relationships or marriages. Porter thinks not, and Peter finds her reasoning compelling — as far as the natural law limitation goes …
A Clean Conscience and a Well-Oiled Shield
As I have been noting periodically in this series on liberty, taxation, and theft, I am not issuing a call to action, but rather a call for understanding and recognition. Clearly this is not because action is irrelevant, but rather because rash and precipitous action is usually destructive. Think, and then do. At some point, …
Why Courtship Is Fundamentally Awed
Thomas Umstattd Jr. recently made a splash with his article “Why Courtship is Fundamentally Flawed.” To be perfectly honest, I thought a number of his points were very good, like frosted flakes in the bowl glinting in the morning light of your quiet breakfast nook. But I also thought, retaining the honesty theme here, that …
Surveying the Text: Genesis
Introduction: Just as Abraham walked through the land that he was promised without settling down to inherit the land, so we walk through the Bible, the land of promise, not yet in full possession of all that has been given to us. We have it already, we don’t have it yet. As we will have …
Doug and Maggie
The greatest philosophical question that mankind has come up with on his own is this one: “Why is there something, rather than nothing at all?” And the Christian answer to this question is that the living and true God, out of His grace and good pleasure, determined to create everything that is, which includes all …
Merchants of Resentment
Is it possible to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7)? Well, of course it is. We live in a world where disproportional effects can follow hard after trivial causes. Not only so, but the disproportional effects can be unevenly distributed. Two toddlers disobey their mothers in exactly the same way, and one …
Sexual Justice
If you stick around, in just a moment I am going to be dealing with the problem created by registered sex offenders attending church. However, before we get there, I want to say something about the cultural context we find ourselves in. And that said, I want to warn you beforehand that the point I …
Statist Solutioneering
Wright’s last three chapters were really very good. They were “How to Engage Tomorrow’s World,” “Apocalypse and the Beauty of God,” and “Becoming People of Hope.” What I want to do is make a few brief comments about each, and then make two observations about the book as a whole, and Wright’s influence generally. In …
Hard Providence and Trusting God
Introduction We live in a world where rough things happen. Despite all our advances in technology, everyone in this room will still die. We still get sick. We still have financial challenges. We have the heartbreak of wayward children. We still have to deal with the perversity of sin that we can still find stirring …
The Elton John Version
Wright’s chapter on the case for ordaining women starts off a little oddly. He acknowledges that he used to teach that “the creation of man and woman in their two genders is a vital part of what it meant that humans are created in God’s image. I now regard that as a mistake” (p. 64). …