“I have spoken of the emergence of the global cliché culture as the birthmark of Our Time. Until modernity was ushered into our world, cultures were always local. They were, by definition, sets of meanings and morals, beliefs and habits that arose in specific contexts of history and religion, a people’s social organization and place …
Can the Old Heart Act Like the New Heart?
“If the Father does not do the drawing, if the Father does not give it, then a man cannot come. But does this mean that no one ever comes? No — it means that everyone who comes has been drawn by God. And further, when the Father draws, that drawing is inexorable: ‘All that the …
Convenience Store Therapy
“Television entertainments tend to avoid problems that can’t be solved by the end of the hour.” [David Wells, No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 200.]
Lazarus Didn’t Help Do It
“A dead man is in no shape to prepare himself for resurrection. He is impotent. When Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, it was not a cooperative effort between the two. Christ raised him, and then Lazarus came forth” (The Paideia of God, pp. 62-63).
The Power of the Cultural Vacuum
“What is now in place is not exactly an alternative system of belief. What is in place is no system of belief at all. It is more like a vacuum into the quiet emptiness of which the self is reaching for meaning – and finding only itself. But this is to put the matter more …
What Kind of Objection?
[Speaking of Acts 4:27-28] “They gathered together to commit a heinous crime, but they only did what God’s hand and purpose had settled beforehand. We therefore see that God can control sinful actions without being defiled by those sinful actions. Of course, objections crowd into our minds, but they are not textual objections — at …
The “Malady” of Modesty
“The moral hedges that surrounded our collective life have been trampled down. That is the paramount truth. What once was sublimated is now, in all of its raw and often violent nature, spewed forth in the name of liberty or self-expression. What once had to be private is now paraded publicly for the gallery of …
Bungee Jumping With Frayed Cords
“Our lives are bounded by God. ‘Since his days are determined, the number of his months is with You; You have appointed his limits, so that he cannot pass’ (Job 14:5). Until the time comes that God has established, every man is immortal. As far as God’s determination is concerned, we cannot lengthen and we …
Culture As Cop
“Culture, then, is the outward discipline in which inherited meanings and morality, beliefs and ways of behaving are preserved . . . It is what tells us what owning a Cadillac means, what significance being gay has, how we can measure someone whom we learn is a doctor, an engineer, a street artist, or homeless. …
Reformed Theology and Classical Christian Schools
“Recall that the Reformation had begun early in the sixteenth century, and we can see that the historic position of Protestants was well-established for two and a half centuries before there were really any non-Augustinian Protestants. This pervasive orthodoxy included the American colonies, and it did not begin to erode in our nation until the …