“If a preacher holds anything to be true and knows that his people think he is unwilling to speak his mind upon that point, he had better preach on it next Sunday morning.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 218)
Gentile Believers
“In the Old Testament, Gentiles were under no obligation whatever to become Jews. They could be saved without becoming Jews, and many of them were saved without becoming Jews. The Jews were not the believers of the Old Testament, but were rather the priestly people of the Old Testament. They served in this function for the sake of the Gentile nations.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 45
Islam in Narnia
“I should mention in passing that the entire culture of the Calormenes is obviously a stand-in for Islam. This is most explicit at the beginning of chapter 4 of The Horse and His Boy when Lewis describes Tashbaan as having numerous minarets—and a minaret is a tower attached to a mosque.”
The Light Behind the Sun, p. 42
No Sugar Coating
“Men are not won by making belief seem easy, nor are men alienated by the hardness of belief, provided only that the hardness seems to be something naturally belonging to the truth, and not something gratuitously added to it.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 214
No Other Way
“If this broad and inclusive approach were true, then Christ died for nothing. With a sorrow deeper than any man has ever experienced, Christ asked His Father to have the cup pass from Him if there were any other way (Matt. 26:39). If the Father could have said something like, ‘Well, the Rig Veda has some promising developments,’ then why did Jesus have to die? Jesus had to die because there was no other way to save us.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 34
Not Our Story
“And if we inquire too closely into what would have need to have happened to her [Susan] in order to bring all this about, we can be assured that this would be a sure way to get Aslan to growl at us.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 30
Solid Platonism
“For Plato, the realm of the Forms would not have been material, tangible, or dense with molecules. Rather, Plato was thinking of an upscale Euclidville.”
The Light Behind the Sun, p. 26
Invest Elsewhere
“What is someone to do, if they find their identity in beauty, in a world where beauty fades?”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 21
Understandably So
“Most of them [chapters] were written for the blog Blog and Mablog. Special thanks should go to the owner of that blog, a fellow who has always treated me like a true gentleman.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 2
More Like Tumult and Convulsions
“Reformation and revival will not happen to the background noise of polite golf applause.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 150