“It would not rock my Protestant world at all if I died and went to heaven, only to discover that at some point in my worldly sojourn, Mary had stumbled across some aspect of my story and prayed for me. ‘Oh, my. Look at that poor sap there.’ But for me to ask her to …
The Problem Is What You Assume, Not So Much What You Say
“When I ask my friend Bob to pray for me because I have an appointment with the surgeon tomorrow, I do not have to assume any superhuman powers on the part of Bob in order to make the request of him. I know he heard me, because he was right there, and he heard the …
Lesser Kissing
“The fact that humans can have it all worked out in their abstract theology (latria, hyperdulia, and dulia) such that they can admit to being an iconodule, but not an idolater, makes me hop in place in my impatient Protestant way. Imagine a wife catching her husband kissing the chambermaid. ‘Ah, my dear,’ he says. …
Lesser Authorities
“The Bible teaches that I am as a Christian to submit myself to spiritual authorities other than the Bible. These authorities would include my parents (who taught me to love God before I could read), my church (which taught me, for example, to memorize Scripture), and Bauer’s Lexicon (which teaches me that eulogeo means to …
High Mountain Air
[The grace of justification] “is moral liberty—the opposite of antinomian licentiousness and the opposite of legalistic wowserism. It is a blast of mountain air after two hours in the sauna” (Papa Don’t Pope, pp. 133).
No, Really. Not Mine.
[Concerning Phil. 3:9] “Let us get one thing clear at the outset—if Paul is to be justified by righteousness, whose will it be? For starters, Paul says not mine. ” (Papa Don’t Pope, pp. 133).
Which Is Why We Are Here on the Bottom
“The human race is constituted as a race. Individual persons are not like individual rocks in the driveway, but rather like individual leaves on a tree. Each leaf can be made out distinctly, but anybody who seeks to understand leaves without reference to the tree is not following the path of wisdom. So when Adam …
Every Direction is Problematic
“Given the penchant for organization displayed by the human mind, which is in its turn a reflection of how God made the world, it is impossible to leave one error without heading toward another one. It is not possible to leave an error forcefully without creating a situation in which you are forcefully headed toward …
Because of Extant Bibles
“The reason that the use of images in worship was not controversial in the first generations of the Church was because nobody was doing it. Centuries later, when they began to do it, the controversy came” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 113).
As In, Not Very Well
“The veneration of icons in a Christian synagogue in A.D. 57 would have gone over like a big pile of greasy bacon at their men’s prayer breakfast” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 112).