Tag: Chrestomathy

“The Lord’s usual preaching target did not appear to be drug dealers and hookers. His assaults were usually directed at religious professionals. Further, He did not address them in a true collegial spirit, as one truth-seeking rabbi to another. Instead, He referred to ‘Fools and blind! Blind guides! Hypocrites! Serpents! Brood of vipers!” From all this we might conclude that seminaries should be called a bag of snakes from time to time in order to help them keep their vision and focus clear.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 166

“I hope it is possible to say this with all reverence, but Jesus was a tough customer . . . the image that many have of the Lord’s personality and strength of character comes more from man-made traditions and saccharine portrait painters than it does from the Bible. One easily envisions a genteel limp-wrist standing outside the door of someone’s heart, gently tapping, because of course the doorknob is only on the inside. The only thing missing from this vision is the ribbon in his hair. I have sometimes thought that a far better picture of Jesus knocking at the door of my heart would be a commanding hand from offstage, two rows of angels with a battering ram, and a worried-looking troll peeking out over the wall of a castle. Otto Scott put it well when he said that God of the Bible is no buttercup.”

The Cultural Mind, pp. 163-164

“When God is ‘removed’ from His predestinating throne, men do not merely breathe a sigh of relief. Rather, they quickly notice that the throne is vacant and begin scheming about how to occupy it . . . The only alternative to a predestinating state is a predestinating God . . . And because we do not want Him, we get them.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 161-162

“Predestinarian Calvinists we’re the fathers of civil liberty, and advocates of free will paved the way for various forms of statism.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 160

“Life in the church involves Word and sacraments, while life in the parish involves auto mechanics, farming, retail shops, and schools, along with all the other stuff men and women do.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 152

“Joseph did not find himself ruling Egypt because he graduated from the right law school. Daniel did not find himself a great man in Babylon through some shrewd Mesopotamian logrolling. They got where they did because they had backbones that would not bend.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 148

Another “error is the idea that since the Gospel will have political effects, politics can have a Gospel effect.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 148

“The first is the error of the man who insists we should ‘just preach the Gospel,’ but who also believes intensely that the Gospel can permeate an unbelieving society without throwing that society into cultural upheaval. In order to get the desired calm result, the Gospel that is preached has to be ethereal, otherworldly, and impotent.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 148

“The point of preaching is never to make Christ acceptable. But in a man-centered era, this is automatically thought to be the task of the preacher—somehow making God acceptable to man. The problem that confronts us in the Bible is actually quite different. The real problem is one of sin, and how to make sinful man acceptable to a holy God. The solution, which made holy angels stop their mouths, was the Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection. That is how sinners are made acceptable to God.”

The Cultural Mind, pp. 145

“George Whitefield once said that the churches of his time were dead because dead men preached to them. We may expand the observation. The churches are effeminate because effeminate men with wireless mics stroll around platforms chatting with the congregants. The churches are leaderless because we are nervous about prophetic preaching and settle instead for bland and balanced leadership teams. The churches have no sense of the numinous because men refuse to preach the greatness and glory of the living God.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 144