The biblical view is that human life begins at conception, and conception begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg. Human life must not be defined environmentally as, for example, when that fertilized egg is implanted in the uterine wall. We shouldn’t want the definition of life to be dependent on what other people vote to …
On Building a Potato Gun in the Garage
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEJanuary 13, 2013 Our office has been asked for a statement from Douglas Wilson on the news that he has been formally uninvited from delivering the prayer at President Obama’s Second Inauguration. This controversy, as many know, revolves around the fact that Pastor Wilson made a joke a number of years ago in …
Establishing Your Street Crud
One of the reasons why contemporary Christians are having such a hard time with the postmodern moment is that we have made the mistake of thinking it is based on argument, instead of recognizing it as a massive cultural mood swing. It is a mood, not a defensible stance — and when somebody is in …
The Law Part of Natural Law
Whenever we speak about the kind of law that defines a crime, we are talking about making certain people conform to a pattern they don’t want to conform to. Law in this sense is a function of coercion. This is why I am a minimalist when it comes to law. The fact that something is …
Because . . .
“You may not institute homosexual marriage because __________________________” Your pastor is being interviewed by a reporter and he has just been asked to fill in this particular blank. There are different ways he can go. 1. He can decline to answer the question for manifestly craven reasons.2. He can decline to answer the question for …
When We All Say Whooosh Together
I appreciate the discussion of natural law going on under the previous post. I’d like to respond to a few of the points made, and develop everything just a tad further. First, when I say the teaching of Scripture “trumps” natural law, I was doing nothing more than applying a standard rule of hermeneutics within …
Eleven Theses on Natural Law
1. At the foundational level, natural law needs to refer what nature teaches us, and not to what any particular men have said about it. Natural law theorists are commentators on the text, and commentaries on a great text always differ among themselves. We should not make the mistake of rejecting the text because we …
Our Happiness-Is-A-Warm-Gun Celebrities
In a constitutional republic, the normal ways for an arrogant politician to come a cropper would be through personal scandal and resignation, and/or repudiation at the polls. That’s the way we do. Very few pols, however much they may deserve it, are struck by lightning bolts or small meteorites. Not to probe old wounds, there …
Natural Law and the Lordship of Jesus
“The idea of a binding moral covenant on all persons, with salutary relevance even for the spiritually unregenerate, gave the covenant of works tremendous impetus for political theology” (Glenn Moots, Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology, p. 80). Of course all Reformed thinkers know that everything is connected, but we can still sometimes …
Thick Skin, Tender Hearts
Lee Habeeb recently wrote a piece here for National Review Online, in which he was encouraging Christians to engage winsomely with our surrounding culture, and to make our peace with the way some things were going. He used the example of gay marriage in the civil sphere. David French wrote a very fine response here, …