“The cross saves some sinners and baffles others. The ‘reason’ that both sets of sinners hold in common is not competent to judge these things. All our thoughts must be submissive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:4-5); we must love God with all our minds (Mt. 22:37); and we must never presume that God needs our …
When the Gospel is Opaque
“Rationalists consistently maintain that a truth need not be accepted if it makes no sense to ‘reason.’ But does this not excuse those who are perishing? The gospel makes no sense to them. ‘For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is …
When Reason is Unreasonable
“Throughout Scripture we find a clear contrast between the philosophy of the natural man and the mind of Christ. When such passages are brought to bear on the various doctrines of the rationalist, the response is usually to shrug them off. And yet this is not sufficient; indeed, it is not reasonable. The Word of …
All of Them Face Down
“To what may we liken God? The answer, friends, is nothing. And we show that we may compare Him to nothing by comparing Him to everything that is worthy of Him, and, of course, nothing completely is. In Him we live, and move, and have our being. This is not zen Christianity; it is the …
Poetic Failure
“Only the most profound kind of spiritual blindness can keep a man from seeing what Isaiah is doing here. ‘To whom then will ye liken God?’ Isaiah has been comparing God to all kinds of things throughout this chapter [40], and therefore the point of every comparison must be to show that all of them …
Looking Beyond
“When Isaiah cries out that we are to behold our God, he does so in a way that does not encourage us to start looking under the furniture. This is not altered in the slightest by his use of an image taken from the created order. Yet even here, each single image, however wonderful, if …
Flesh That Reveals the Father
“The majesty of biblical poetry always lifts our thoughts up. Biblical poetic expression is incarnational, which means that there is a body of ‘flesh,’ but it is a body which reveals the Father. Idolatrous poetic expression reveals nothing from above, and spends its energy in rearranging matter down here below. Idolatrous images of the divine …
A Theological Tin Ear
“Human language is necessarily inadequate whenever men speak about God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. But there is creaturely inadequacy, a holy limitation, revealed in virtually every word of Scripture, and then there is an impudent inadequancy. The thing which differentiates the two is not the element of anthropomorphic images (which are …
Imagination Succeeds When It Staggers
“When a biblical vision of the living God is given to us, human imagination staggers, and human reason lies prostrate on the floor. Isaiah is undone, a man of unclean lips, and Moses is hidden in the cleft of the rock so that he will not be dissolved. In the revelation of Himself to us, …
God the Playwright
[Speaking of God as the universal playwright] “But using the illustration of a play is offensive to us. We say that Hamlet is a fictional character, whereas we are real. It is not a good comparison, we mutter, but notice where and why we take offense. We are much greater than Hamlet, and zeal for …