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, …
On Being a Responsible Bad Boy
I offer this in the spirit of dispassionate analysis, and not with any sense of complaint. One of the things that conservatives have to quit doing is whining about how the foul deeds perpetrated upon our persons are never publicly identified for what they are. The most recent example was the union thuggery in Lansing …
Going Splash in the Sea of Japan
One other point needs to be made about sexual egalitarianism, but let me, if I may, move it (somewhat) away from N.T. Wright’s support of women’s ordination. We need to address, in a more general way, the idea that milder feminism (in those manifestations which are for some reason palatable to evangelicals) is “not about …