“The word conserve is a transitive verb, and there is no virtue or vice in any transitive verb. So you love, but what do you love? God? Ice cream? Child porn? The church you were baptized in? Your favorite pair of jeans? So you conserve, but what is it you want to conserve? The Kremlin …
The Center is not the Circumference
“I put a distinction between the Church and the Kingdom. The Church is at the center, Word and sacrament, and only sacred things are sacred. Because what the Church does is potent, this transforms the entire world—but it doesn’t turn the world into Church. That’s not the transformation. The Church turns the world into what …
Each Are the Context of the Other
“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 …