“We may divide the law of the Old Testament into two basic categories, those of creation law and redemptive law. Creation law is that which looks the same throughout the history of the world. The definition of marriage and adultery did not change in the transition between the old and new covenants. Theft looked the …
Poetics of Grace
“Similarly, William H. Halewood argues that the pervasive Augustinianism of the period — Augustine as interpreted by the Reformation — led Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Marvell, and Milton to develop a poetic mode exploring man’s radical sinfulness and God’s overpowering grace” (Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, p. 14).
Not From the Theory Down
“As a doctor working in a slum area with many immigrant residents, I see multiculturalism from the ground up rather than from the theory down. And it is clear from what I see almost every day that not all cultural values are compatible or can be reconciled by the enunciation of platitudes. The idea that …
A Bedrock of Calvinism
“It is hardly necessary now to argue that the theological tenor of the English Church in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was firmly Protestant, even Calvinist, though literary critics have been in some danger of forgetting that fact as they stress Roman Catholic influences upon Donne or the medieval literary heritage of Herbert, …
Picking Up the Tab
“The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong” (Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, p. 5).
Easily Led in One Direction Only
“When a man tells me, in explanation of his anti-social behavior, that he is easily led, I ask him whether he was ever easily led to study mathematics or the subjunctives of French verbs” (Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, p. ix).
Just Like Alice’s Restaurant
“We build temples to the gods of commerce, and this is why the modern church looks like a shopping mall, sprawling and flat, plenty of parking, Visa and MasterCard accepted. In one city, a church mailed out hundreds of thousands of brochures hawking their wares. Come to our church, they said, and we’ll give you …
Cultural Inferiority
“Genetic or racial determinism is no better. It will come as a surprise to American readers, perhaps, to learn that the majority of the British underclass is white, and that it demonstrates all the same social pathology as the black underclass in America—for very similar reasons, of course” (Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, p. …
Multi-Culti Vengeance
“[A]nd when he repeatedly exposed the follies of these policies in print, the advocates of ‘diversity’—who maintain that all cultures are equal but that opinions other than their own are forbidden—mounted a vicious and vituperative campaign against him . . . Hell, it seems, hath no fury like a multi-culturalist contradicted” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, …
Aesthetic Exemplar
“We should, however, approach Augustinian aesthetics not in medieval but in Reformation terms, taking account of the important new factor introduced by the Reformation — an overwhelming emphasis on the written word as the embodiment of divine truth. In this milieu the Christian poet is led to relate his work not to ineffable and intuited …