Over at First Things, Peter Leithart interacts with a 2010 article by natural law theorist Jean Porter. At issue was the question of whether or not natural law provides a basis for rejecting same-sex relationships or marriages. Porter thinks not, and Peter finds her reasoning compelling — as far as the natural law limitation goes …
A Gracious Gift of the Creeps
I recently read Peter Leithart’s piece on nature at the Trinity House page here, and my initial reaction was to pose a test case scenario for him. It looked like this. I wrote Peter and asked him to write an article that assumes his “un-metaphysic” about nature, and use it to demonstrate the sinfulness of …
Created Nature
In any discussion of nature, one of the things we must always be on guard against is this. We are a sinful race and when we sin intellectually, it is always with the materials that are ready at hand. We fail, when we fail, because we have not resisted our own temptations. We also failed …
Like a Postprandial Sloth
I have to say that I didn’t expect that reaction. Courtship is a hotter/bigger topic these days than I realized. What I would like to do is throw together a series of brief responses to some of the issues raised in the comments. The results may or may not come together as a coherent post. …
Why Courtship Is Fundamentally Awed
Thomas Umstattd Jr. recently made a splash with his article “Why Courtship is Fundamentally Flawed.” To be perfectly honest, I thought a number of his points were very good, like frosted flakes in the bowl glinting in the morning light of your quiet breakfast nook. But I also thought, retaining the honesty theme here, that …
No High Like the Most High!
Okay, this is for all you people, like me, who need to get out more. Apparently there is this Christian rock star, Vicky Beeching, who has written worship music that lots of people sing, and who has come out of the closet as being something that rhymes with say. You can read a brief interview …
The Word Count of Righteousness
I am currently reading a (very good) book on preaching by William Willimon. The book is entitled Proclamation and Theology, and Willimon is a bishop in the United Methodist Church. He plainly got to his position of influence there because of intelligence, learning, grace, and wisdom. But. He is in a liberal denomination, surrounded of …
Say It With Ink
I have been busy of late, and so haven’t gotten to a plug of what my friend Steve Jeffery recently said about tattoos. But I am now in a position to remedy my shortcomings, and so here is the link. While I am at it, I shall also include a New Yorker cartoon for your …
Merchants of Resentment
Is it possible to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7)? Well, of course it is. We live in a world where disproportional effects can follow hard after trivial causes. Not only so, but the disproportional effects can be unevenly distributed. Two toddlers disobey their mothers in exactly the same way, and one …
Sexual Justice
If you stick around, in just a moment I am going to be dealing with the problem created by registered sex offenders attending church. However, before we get there, I want to say something about the cultural context we find ourselves in. And that said, I want to warn you beforehand that the point I …