“What we must do is receive all God’s covenantal blessings, as thick as we can conceive of them, and then imagine how much thicker Heaven will be. Let Jesus cut the bacon, in other words.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 49
Spiritual Paint Thinner
“If I turn every gift that God gives over in my hands suspiciously, looking for the idol trap, then I am not rejoicing before Him the way I ought to be . . . This world competes with the eternal things, and so what we think we must do is get a five-gallon bucket of dour paint thinner and pour it over all our material possessions. We try to make Heaven thick by making earth thin.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, pp. 48-49
Not Two Billiard Balls
“In a perichoretic world, the gift need not displace the Giver, as though they were two billiard balls. In the material world, the space that one object occupies is space that another object cannot occupy. We carry our assumptions about this over into the spiritual world, and we consequently assume that if we are thinking about meat on the grill, bees in the honeysuckle, a sweet wife in bed, beer in a frosted glass, or a full tank of gas and lots of Wyoming ahead, then we cannot be thinking about God also, or be living in gratitude before Him. But I don’t believe this is the case at all.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, pp. 47-48
Just One Sacramental
“There are two sacraments, true, there is is only one sacramental. The world is that sacramental, and everything in it. Grace is everywhere and gets into everything. Faith can dig it out of anything. The grandeur of God can flame out from anything, like the shining from shook foil.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 40.
Beer and Bacon Too
“He rose from the dead in this world in order to redeem everything about it, beer and bacon included.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 39
Avoiding the Snob Option
“At the end of the day, refined hedonism just creates snobs. Sure, they don’t find their pleasures in carousing, snorting cocaine, chasing skirts, and whatnot, but rather in taking a stroll through a miniature Japanese garden on a pleasant summer evening, in order to contemplate geometric proofs and chess moves of a higher order. And they are insufferable.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 39
Fighting Like a True Man
Chesterton “fought unbelief effectively, but he always fought like a cavalier and never like a thug with a wart on his nose.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 35
Humble, Not Craven
“If the humility does not end in gladness and triumph, then the humility did not begin (really) in humility at all. Humility submits, and therefore does not insist on groveling permanently.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 34
As Time Goes By
“But whenever God delivers His people in any remarkable way, as the years go by, whatever new wineskin was involved in it will turn gradually into an old wineskin.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 32
When Art Came Down
“What did painting the medieval period take for its subjects? Well, pretty much anybody with a halo. The holy family, Madonna and child, the twelves apostles, and so on. Now do not take me wrong. I have no problem with art treating biblical themes. That did not go away with the Reformation. But what came in as a result of the Reformation? The Dutch realist painters introduced us to the glory of the mundane. A girl reading a letter, a woman making lace, another woman pouring something from a jug, a girl with an earring, another girl smirking, still life table settings, an anatomy lecture with a cadaver. In short, art came down and dwelt among the people . . . just as the Lord had done.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, pp. 27-28