“On the other side of things, we have the ‘exalted tradition’ contingent. The traditions of men are frankly acclaimed as the requirements of God. This may be held with doctrinal consistency, as the Roman Catholics do, or furtively, as inconsistent ‘strict subscriptionists’ within the Reformed tradition do. This is the ‘tradition as monarch’ school. The …
Mud and Stone of This Earth
“But we have also seen that he [Taylor] was a Puritan after all, that like his fellow Puritans he practiced his religion through metaphoric poetry linking earth and heaven. Like them he saw God’s glory immanent in the world and the flesh, and he never presumed to ignore either or to abjure metaphor. Like them …
False Impressions
[Fairy tales are] “accused of giving children a false impression of the world they live in. But I think no literature that children could read gives them less of a false impression. I think what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to deceive them. I never expected the real world …
Tradition is Contrary to Our Historic Practice
“The unthinking fundamentalist wants to reduce the whole problem to a very simple equation — ‘just stick to the Bible.’ His belief is that fooling around with traditions in the first place is what cause the problem. We may call this the ‘tradition as demon’ position. ‘We don’t believe in tradition. We have never believed …
Metaphors as Means of Sanctification
“Holy living is associated here with writing in metaphors, though the association is only metaphoric, and Taylor is urging his congregation to ‘turn poets of righteousness’ . . . For Taylor, then, writing in metaphors was part of his imitation of Christ” (Daly, p. 184).
The Universal Read
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty—except, of course, books of information” (C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds, p. 15).
The Primal Confession
“After all, the Table of Contents in our Bibles is one of the Church’s first and most important confessional traditions” (Mother Kirk, p. 61).
Metaphor as Ultimate Reality
“But the greatest metaphor, for Taylor, is Christ Himself, the living link between grace and nature, God and man, the metaphor who uses metaphor and whose union of earthly and divine is figured through another metaphor, the Lord’s Supper” (Daly, p. 181).
Something to Push Against
“Creative freedom can defeat itself because novelty can be felt only in relation to a perceived norm, just as rhythmic freedom can only be felt against a regular meter. When the norm is obscured by heedless violations, interest gradually disappears” (Jacques Barzun, The Culture We Deserve, p. 155).
Selling Bibles In Every Possible Configuration
“We should all be realists by now and not expect the solution to come from those who are profiteering off the problem. If a serious reform of this particular publishing travesty ever got large enough for anyone to notice it, the caterwauling of Textual Critic and Businessman, in close harmony with one another, would lead …