Theology That Bites Back
[Regarding Eph. 6:1-4] “So we have ourselves a chicken and egg problem. The fact that Paul commands fathers to begin a Christian process of enculturation means that he saw, with the eye of faith, the end result, which would have to be a Christian culture.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 141
“The message of ‘tax-supported anything but Christianity’ comes through loud and clear.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 140
“A conceited man thinks about himself all the time. A morbid, self-absorbed man does the same, and this means the two men have the same problem . . . ‘Learning how to love yourself’ is not the first step in obedience; it is clambering onto a veritable squirrel-cage run of disobedience.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 137
“So a humble man and a proud man are not distinguished from one another because the latter does what he wants and the former does not. Rather, they are distinguished because they want different things. No creature ever desired anything from a base outside its own desires. So a humble man delights in God, and a proud man delights in that which is not God.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 136-137
“In order to argue anything, a man has to be able to say this, not that; here, not there; A, not A. In short he has to be able to make distinctions. So argumentation depends on this, and distinctions in their turn depend on having an ultimate ground for making distinctions. In the historic Protestant view, the ultimate and greatest distinction that must be maintained at all times is the distinction between the Creator and the creature.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 132
“We, in the grip of a very bad idea, have thought to repeal some fundamental laws of the natural order of things. Good luck to us all, says I. Let us repeal the law of gravity to cut down on that frictional wear and tear. Let us herd cats. Let us sweep water uphill. Let us feed cheesecake to our horses.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 130
[Concerning Deut. 22:5] “Transvestite men certainly are condemned here, but the language with regard to the women is quite different. The operative phrase in this passage is keli gabar, the gear of a warrior. A woman is not to wear the gear of a fighter. The prohibition is not one of slacks, but rather of helmets and heavy rifles.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 129
“The sillier a position gets, the more shouting is required to keep people from asking those pesky questions.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 127
“Social calamities, therefore, must not be understood as ‘random bad things’—our God is a God who keeps covenant, and this necessarily includes covenant blessings and curses. And this cannot be understood apart from a diligent study of Scripture and church history up to the present.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 125
“The teaching of the Bible here is that the chaos of panic is not a response to chastisement but is part of the chastisement itself.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 124
