“There is true blessing here, and it is the result of covenantal identification. This is a blessing that is poured out on the believer by a sovereign God in a providential response to the believer’s obedience. The blessing does not come through the elements, like water through a garden hose. But it does come on …
The Uber-Goober
“In Nietzsche, the ethic of transgression has been stripped of scenes of explicit sexual torture and destruction and raised to an alluring intellectual Valhalla of lyric philosophy. We have no evidence that Nietzsche ever read the divine marquis. Nevertheless, the philosopher of the Overman offers a modified product with enhanced appeal for some: Sade without …
No Covenantal Island
“This shows us that the sacrament is not a covenantal island in the middle of a noncovenantal world. Rather, everything around us must be seen in covenantal categories — unbelief included — with the Table of the Lord at the center of believing covenantal living” (Mother Kirk, p. 100).
And Lord Acton Knew His Onions
“The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge” (Lord Acton, as quoted in Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge, p. 236).
Two Kinds of Real Christian
“Suppose a man marries and he knows that he is going to be unfaithful to his wife — in fact, he already has adulterous plans. But for various reasons, he thinks it expedient to be married, so he does to the church and makes the vows. Now, is he married? Of course he is — …
Not Much Changes
“In its impact on people’s behavior and sense of ‘alienation’ and by its apparent sincerity of feeling, The Stranger came close to becoming the mid-twentieth century equivalent of Goethe’s best-selling The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), which provoked hundreds of suicides all over Europe” (Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge, p. 161).
And You Have to Sign the Card With a Little Stubby Pencil Too
“We do not like the idea of requiring a man to be baptized down in front of the church before we call him a professing Christian — although Jesus commanded such baptism. In lieu of this, we offer a substitute of our devising. Instead of being baptized in front of the church, we say he …
And Democracy is Us Listening to the Voices in our Head
“In other words, no one may rightly judge Demos except Demos. God, insofar as there is one, is synonymous with Community” (Bernard Iddings Bell, Crowd Culture, p. 103).
Teeming With Metaphor
“There are only two established sacraments in the Christian Church, which are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But the whole world is sacramental, teeming with metaphor. To come to a fuller understanding of this, we should seek to grow in our knowledge of the two formal sacraments that have been placed within the Church. Baptism …
Dull Dogs
“The idea is to treat all the pupils as though they were equally intelligent. The standard of achievement is set to fit the average, which is fair-to-middling low. The result is a mediocrity which frets and frustrates the more able while it flatters the incompetent. This mediocrity is making Americans increasingly a set of dull …