“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 …
But He Says Nothing About Robins
“We are of course missing the point of the Lord’s doctrine [Matt. 10:29-30] if we say, ‘Yes, God knows all about the sparrows, but where does the Bible say He keeps track of swallows?’ Jesus is giving us one blunt example in order to show us the extremities of God’s knowledge. He invites us to …
Where We Got All the Uber-Goobers
“It took Nietzsche to philosophize out of Wagner’s music a program for cultural revolution that would shake the coming age to its foundation. The twentieth century was to become the proving ground for Nietzschean philosophy in its various permutations. There were the Nazis, and then there was the global cultural revolution of 1968-1969, and then …
Every Tuft of Grass
“God knows every bird of the mountains [Ps. 50:10-11]. His knowledge of the universe is much more than a grand, broad knowledge — it extends down to minute particulars. God knows far more than the correct number of galaxies; He knows all the movements of the mockingbird in your backyard–every dive, every step, every movement, …
Mark the Music
“For the next one hundred fifty years, the West would post the Liebestod question again and again in various ways, from Nazism to Woodstock, and never be able to come up with an answer. In the process, enormous amounts of cultural patrimony were thrown overboard. Classical music, freed from patriarchal melody by Wagner’s chromatic modulations, …
Stay Away From Nonsense
“Those who receive the limits on human reason set by Scripture know that this is not an argument for speaking nonsense, but rather an admonition to us so that migh learn when we need to shut up — so that we might avoid speaking nonsense. ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, …
Musical Pornography
“To modulate the notes unceasingly from one key to another, as Wagner’s chromaticism did, was tantamount to blunting the emotional focus; to lead them away never to return to the dominant note gave the feeling of tumultuous and unsatisfied passion, a passion that never got resolved. From a human perspective, there was generally only one …
But What About a Really Smart June Bug?
“We may be baffled by all this, but God is the foundation of all reason and order, and the problem does not perplex Him. But a man attempting to determine what the everlasting God may or may not do in history as He inhabits eternity is like a June bug trying to do quantum physics. …
The Real Problem with “Kill the Wabbit”
“The attraction was essentially erotic. This music bespoke emotion liberated from reason. In the musical realm, the assault on tonality corresponded to an assault on sexual restraint in the moral realm and an attack on the social order in the political realm. Wagner could achieve all three, which would correspond to the deepest needs he …