“Because one of the male strengths is simple-mindedness, men tend to evaluate all things according to the sort of criterion (fixed in their minds sometime in junior high) best illustrated by arm-wrestling contests or a footrace. Life is simple — stronger and faster is better. And because life is also a contest, everyone is measured …
The Center of History
“The resurrection of Christ defines history, and not the other way around. The central Christian confession–the Apostles’ Creed–is full of historical claims, and ministers are the appointed guardians of those claims. At any moment, a trained historian might come into the Garden and say, ‘Yea, hath God said?'” (Black and Tan, p. 2).
The Original Flame
“The duty of ongoing sexual relations is clearly presented by Paul when he says, “Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband” (1 Cor. 7:3). Modern liberated types enjoy sniffing at this, as though making sexual relations a duty somehow removes the romance, the …
Inescapable History
“But all preachers must also be historians in some sense, because we preach from the Bible, most of which is sacred history. The center of our faith is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, an event in history. When a professional historian sidles up to me and says that the event did not happen, it doesn’t …
Moralism Without A Cross
“Whenever religious teaching is detached from the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, it always degenerates into a vapid moralism. And when husbands instruct their wives without the framework of the atonement shaping their thinking, their instruction will exhibit only a pious cast of mind with the edges of each word smudged and blurred” (Federal …
Inescapable
“A man who is the head of his wife is preaching all day about Christ and the Church — his obedience or disobedience will determine whether his preaching is full of lies or not, but the very nature of his relation to his wife means that he is preaching, like it or not” (Federal Husband, …
Trinitarian Submission
“In our modern egalitarian world, submission is always seen as a form of losing or of being inferior in some way. But we fall into this error because we no longer think in a trinitarian fashion. Submission is seen as entailing inferiority because we do not understand the deity of Christ and His full submission …
Imitative Loving
“This means that our theology of Christ’s love will be determinative of how a Christian wife is loved. How a man understands ultimate covenant loving will settle how he sets about covenantal loving. How he understands the thing to be imitated will determine how and what he imitates” (Federal Husband, p. 10).
Bob’s Sunshine Bank
“Among the many words which our century has trashed (words like awesome and gay), this word federal most certainly heads the list. The word makes us think of big, centralized things, things that make a collectivist’s heart feel warm and cozy. We slap the word on institutions so little old ladies will deposit their money …
Unprovoked
“Anyone who undertakes to add to the number of modern books on marriage had better have some good reason. This is particularly true if the author in question is doing it for the second time and all apparently unprovoked. One would think our interest in marriage books would be waning by this time; like the …