“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).
God Keeps Making Everything Binary
“However much we might want to obscure the issues, however much we might build great universities with trained brains to cover everything in a dark mist, however much we reward those pundits who make ample room for our lusts and opinions, at the end of the day, we have to decide if we are going …
And Cooler is Better, Right?
“Thinking missional shalom instead of evangelistic soul-winning only makes you cooler, not more effective at it” (Empires of Dirt, p. 150).
Keeping “Faithful Presence” Within Acceptable Limits
“Where do wholeness, beauty, and joy take root? The point is clear enough—the rainbows appear in the sky, and the Smurfs come out to dance—but when will this happen? Where does it happen? On what scale does it happen? This is important to mention because Hunter has already make it abundantly clear that it cannot …
Although it Might be a Sturdy Taco Stand
“The Reformed theology I have read and studied and loved built a great civilization. The Reformed theology of the truncated R2K brethren, consistently applied, would have trouble building a taco stand” (Empires of Dirt, p. 145).
Baptized Immaturity
“I want to live in a baptized civilization. That is what I mean by mere Christendom. But this means, if I understand what I want, that I also want to live in the midst of baptized immaturity. If we are the Dufflepuds, and a glance at the national debt indicates that we most certainly are, …