“The same is true when we encounter figures that relate to God’s knowledge — for example, those figures which represent God as repenting or relenting (Gen. 6:6; Exod. 32:12, 14), remembering (Gen. 9:15-16; Exod. 6:5), or forgetting (Ps. 9:18; Ps. 13:1; Jer. 23:39). ‘The God remembered Noah’ (Gen. 8:1). Does God smack His forehead in …
Whatever the Artist Does
“The purpose is not to give the audience pleasure, but to assault them with a ‘decentering’ experience. Art becomes defined as ‘whatever an artist does.’ As a result, the work of art becomes less important than the artist, a view which encourages posturing, egotism, and self-indulgence instead of artistic excellence. These new assumptions about art …
God or Zeus
“Two basic options are open to us. We can either recognize that all of Scripture is consistent, and that an infinite God condescends to appear, from time to time, to finite men in finite form, or we wind up with an Olympian Zeus — a god who sleeps, finds things out, gets hungry, and, if …
You Can Run But You Can’t Hide
“Christians might think that the confusions in the art world are no concern to them, simply another example of the vanity of this world. The arts, though, are important. We cannot escape them. They permeate our lives and our culture. The décor of our surroundings; the music we listen to; the entertainment we enjoy in …
Reason As Servant
“Suppose someone rejects the teaching of the Bible on God’s omniscience, but not because of any grammatical or exegetical reason. Suppose he rejects it because it contradicts something that his ‘reason’ insists on keeping. Who then is his Lord? Reason, or Christ? And who is the servant? Reason, or Christ? And to press it back …
Can Reason Run With Horses?
“The use of the phrase ‘if words have meaning’ is very important here. It is ironic that people can hold reason in very high esteem adn say that it is competent to investigate the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God, as well as the nature of time and eternity, and yet when it …
Inane Classicism
“During the sixties, a number of important cultural transactions took place. The classical musical tradition (that is, new music being composed in the tradition of Beethoven and Mozart) finally collapsed under the weight of its own inanity. The fact that John Cage and Karl Heinz Stockhausen were at all taken seriously was a sign that …
Musical Four-wheeling
“Music, quite simply, has to go somewhere. It is organized in time. If there is no reason why one note should follow another, there is no way of organizing that time in any coherent fashion. Atonality meant a freedom analogous to taking down all signs and abolishing all roads.” [E. Michael Jones, Dionysos Rising (San …
The Last Yellow Dog
“Both camps [Calvinists and Arminians] hold to the orthodox doctrine of God that maintains that God knows the end from the beginning. Before the foundation of the world, God saw the last yellow dog ever to walk down some street at the end of the world, and before eternal times God knew the number of …
Don’t You Love Them Madly?
“To jump ahead roughly one hundred years: Jim Morrison described his band The Doors as ‘erotic politicians’. ‘We’re interested in everything about revolt, disorder, and all activity that appears to have no meaning.’ It is difficult to imagine what Nietzsche would have thought of the music, but it is hard to imagine him withholding his …