As things continue to devolve, as things get ever more crazy, as our culture, to use that term loosely, continues to come unstuck, many believers have become discouraged, not knowing if there is anything they can do. Other believers have been eschatologically immobilized, thinking that these dire developments are just baked into their “last times” …
The Suicide of the West
The massacre in Paris has brought two things, already obvious, into high relief once again. We are observing, in slow motion, a collision between two very diseased cultures. The diseases are quite different but seem, in some respects, to be made for each other. One disease is listless and the other aggressive. One has no …
Principalities, Powers, and Pecksniffs
I have recently been listening through a collection of essays by C.S. Lewis, and have been having a wonderful time. I don’t have a long commute, three or four minutes is more like it, but it is amazing how much steak you can eat when you cut it up like that. I just recently finished …
No Cow in Moscow
How does one pronounce the name of our lovely little town? We have grown accustomed to telling people that there is “no cow in Moscow.” It is moss koh, not mos cowww. But there may be additional significance beyond the absence of that special bovine je ne sais quoi in our name. Or, if not …
Diversity Except for That Kind! Exhibit 783
Curling Up Under the Blanket
We live in a generation that is totalitarian in principle, having accepted all the basic totalitarian premises. Denying the Lordship of Jesus Christ drives you to those premises — for if Jesus is not Lord, then there is a vacancy that men will always want to fill. Without an exhaustive rule through the predestinating love …
5 Reasons for Thinking that Putin is No Constantine
The reason for this small piece is that some Western Christians, who really ought to know better, have been taken in by Russian photo ops, propaganda, and posturing, and have begun to describe Vladimir Putin as a new Constantine. It just goes to show. What, I am not sure exactly, but it does go to …
Click to Convict
A few weeks ago, Rod Dreher posted a clip of Thomas More being willing to give the devil “the benefit of law.” This was offered in the context of the Kim Davis uproar, about which a great deal of unhelpful nonsense continues to be thought and written. Pope Francis recently weighed in with his view …
A Duty to Interpose
One of the things we must absolutely learn how to do better than we do is distinguish things that differ, especially things that look similar but which differ radically. We must learn to say, as Dorothy Sayers once famously said, distinguo. I distinguish. There is a profound difference between the doctrine of interposition/lesser magistrates on …
Benedict and Beza Options
Many thanks to Rod Dreher for taking the time to interact with some of my arguments on the Kim Davis case. Our theological differences notwithstanding, I have appreciated having his voice as part of our public debates, especially now that the welter of voices is trying to drown out the few remaining sane ones like …