This article was originally published in Antithesis (July/August 1990). I still agree with all of this, but I must say that reading stuff of mine that is over twenty years old gives me the feeling that I used to compose my prose with flattened cardboard boxes and tin snips. Just so you know. In preparing …
Not That Kind of Blessing . . .
A few years ago, I wrote eleven theses on birth control, which you can read here. But the fact that a certain line of discussion broke out in the comments of another recent post made me want to develop my eighth and ninth points, which is that children are covenant blessing, not an automatic blessing. …
Domestic Mussolinis
This last October I put up a post called Bitterness and the Unsubmissive Wife. This generated some comment at the time, not to mention since then, and because there are some aspects of this that really are difficult for some to grasp, I thought I should make just a few more points about the whole …
Fear, Shame, and Guilt at Lunch
My friend Toby Sumpter has written a series of posts on food here (starting with his Free Range post), and this has generated some back and forth in various places, both online and off, and I thought I should join the discussion. But first some exegetical background. In John 6, the Lord fed the five …
What Mary Knew
Introduction Last week we considered what Joseph knew, and obviously Mary knew all the same things, and for the same reason. But she had more direct experience with the marvels that came to earth through her. For example, the angelic communication with Joseph came through dreams, but came to her directly. The Text: “And the …
Mary Overcame
“Mary overcame in the way women are called to conquer — by giving birth to conquerors, or by giving birth to daughters who will give birth to conquerors. And this explains how the Magnificat can have been composed by a woman and still be so gloriously militant. Godly child-bearing is militant. The seed of the …
Vision Forum and Blaming the Victim
If you glance at the right side bar, you may quickly ascertain that my previous two posts about Doug Philips and Vision Forum are right up there among the most read. This was, in part, driven by some who want to cast me as a defender of things I do not actually defend. If you …
Protestantism Without Borders
I will say it right now. Chesterton is my favorite papist. This is something you could probably figure out from how much I quote him, but how much I have learned from him extends far beyond that. One of the things I learned from him is the fundamental stance of a reformer — in order …
Just One More Thing . . .
Tim Bayly passed on this joke over at his place: Two aged orthodox Episcopal priests knelt side-by-side in the trendy new diocesan cathedral, waiting for their bishop’s Easter service to begin. It commenced with a lonely, eerie wisp of Tibetan bells wafting through the rafters. Then a chorus of plucked hand-harps took up the icy …
Marrying Your First Husband Again
Many things can be said, and have been, about divorce and remarriage. I want to make just a few additional observations, using as a platform the odd legislation found in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. In order to set the context, I hold the common view among evangelicals that divorce and remarriage is not permitted unless the other …