“We often talk as though Hell were nothing but a gigantic miscarriage of justice, the end result of God somehow losing all sense of proportion. We want to think of the Last Judgment as requiring an impressive explanation and defense because we think of it as that day at the end of the world when …
The Outer Hell
“Those who are spiraling downward in the final lostness are people who are in the process of losing the capacity for relationship. Scripture describes that kind of relationship as one which bites and devours, or which wants a relationship with others so that someone might be within striking distance. But eventually everyone moves out of …
Law is Relational
“Sin must be against someone. It is not primarily a matter of being against a rule—for a rule does not exist without a rule-giver, or the specified persons that the rule concerns . . . whenever the law is broken, that means that someone has been wronged, grieved, or hurt” (Mere Fundamentalism, pp. 52-53).
Sin Veers
“Sin is necessarily parasitic. Sin is bent righteousness. Sin cannot exist in its own name, it cannot stand on its own feet. Goodness, being an attribute of God, simply is. Evil is a knock-off, a corruption, a twisting, and a deviation” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 52).
The Direction of Glory
“A man seeking true glory has his eye fixed on God. A man in pursuit of vainglory is given to the sidelong glance” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 51).
What Is Actually Delivered
“The striving is always in the direction of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, and it always seems to wind up as Nietzsche himself did—broken, mad, pathetic. The Ring promises us a king or an emperor with godlike powers, but delivers us Gollum” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 44).
And What a Failure
“Sin is a glory failure” (Mere Fundamentalism, p. 42).
A Glorious Promise
“The attempts to create a superman have not been few. We see it in the attempt by the antediluvians to breed immortals (Gen. 6), we see it in the ravings of Nietzsche, and we see it with modern unbelievers tinkering around with the human genome. In reply, God says—God has always said—that mankind shall be …
Mark the Design
“God did not create two men, and so homosexuality is excluded. He did not create Adam and three women, and so polygamy is excluded. A helper suitable to Adam was not found among the beasts, and so bestiality is excluded. He did not create two women, which rules out lesbianism. All such images would be …
How God Knits
“And so Adam was put into a deep sleep, into a deathlike coma, and God operated on him. One was broken into two, and the bloody rib was transformed into a woman. One was made into two in order that those two could, in a different manner, become one again. And after they became one …