“Special revelation is the specific revelation left to us by the One who created Heaven and earth—the ultimate metanarrative. Both forms of revelation are metanarratives, and apart from the other, neither one is” (Empires of Dirt, p. 181).
The Warm Brownies of Natural Law
“A couple of young brothers go home after school, accompanied by a couple of unbelieving friends. When they get to the house, they find it clean and in good order. There are some beautiful paintings on the wall, the work of the boys’ mother. On the counter is a tray of brownies, still warm. This …
In the Middle of the Forehead
“But I propose a contest. Let’s build an altar of stones, an altar of absolute toleration. Let’s have ACLU lawyers dance around it until noon, cutting themselves with knives and hitting themselves on the head with briefcases. Let us build another altar, and ask Elijah to stretch out his hands toward Heaven and call upon …
Not That Kind of Night
“What I am saying here is that an explicitly Christian settlement would do a better job of protecting the true rights of Muslims and secularists than secularists do in protecting the rights of Christians” (Empires of Dirt, p. 177).
Because Religious Liberty is a Christian Value
“What I am saying here is that an explicitly Christian settlement would do a better job of protecting the true rights of Muslims and secularists than secularists do in protecting the rights of Christians” (Empires of Dirt, p. 177).
Postmill Pipe Dreams
“There is a vast canyon between the early postmillennialists, who believed that the gospel preached would bring the nations to Christ, and the pale, washed-out optimisms of foreign policy dreamers two centuries later” (Empires of Dirt, p. 174).
Or, More Recently, Presidential Portrait Painters
“I do not believe that the builders of the Salisbury Cathedral, the composer of the Brandenburg Concertos, the painter of The Night Watch, or the writer of Paradise Lost, have anything to apologize for in the thin shade of Kanye West, John Cage, Jackson Pollock, Walter Gropius, or Barry Manilow” (Empires of Dirt, p. 165).
And Occasionally Insufficient Gratitude
“Since secularism took over from the bad old religious bigots who used to kill scores and scores of people, we have since that time had a long millennium of sunshine and glittery rainbows, in which only scores of millions of people have been slaughtered. We celebrate this deliverance of ours and bow our heads in …
Like Making Typhoid Mary a Nurse
“Here’s a thought experiment for you. Take a couple of princes from the seventeenth century, one Catholic and one Protestant, and both of them experienced soldiers. Show them, in a vision, the battle of the Somme, the bombing of Dresden, the battle of Midway, the Great Leap Forward, the gulags of communism, and the two …
Mere Simplicity
“As has already been said, by mere Christendom, I mean a public and formal recognition of the authority of Jesus Christ that repudiates the principles of secularism and that avoids both hard sectarianism and easy latitudinarianism. Easier said than done, but there it is” (Empires of Dirt, p. 159).