One of the problems with using Constantine as a marker is that there is a tendency to anachronism, attributing to him any subsequent malfeasance on the part of Christians in power. But the Constantinian settlement was, by and large, a tolerant one. Lactantius, the early church father who tutored Constantine’s children, was an apologist for …
About as Unique as a Pint of Salt Water
One of the foundational temptations for us as we consider our forms of social organization is the temptation of thinking that we are unique, and that no one has ever been in the soup we are in. Globalization, the Internet, micro-chips, frankenfood, and wireless hot-spot coffee shops all make it impossible for us to even …
Kuba the Prophet
It must be said, with more than a little regret, that many Christians believe that the Day of Judgment is the time at the end of history when God loses all sense of proportion. If we believe what the Bible teaches about Hell, as we should, but don’t believe what it teaches about gradations of …
The Complete Totalitarian Hellhole
As I have argued many times, the danger for Christians on the right is that of nationalistic idolatry. Christians are told to keep themselves from idols because not doing so is a real possibility (1 Jn. 5:21). There are real attractions in Americolatry for many conservative evangelical believers, and for them I would simply repeat …
What Floats on the Surface of our Hearts
There are three basic ways to relate the authority of the Church to the authority of the civil magistrate. The first is the route taken by ultramontane jesuits, in which scheme the final authority is held by the church, with the pope at the head of it. The second is that of Erastianism, where it …
Slippery and Slipperyier
Solomon tells us that all the human basics are cyclic. They go around, and come around around again. He is not referring to the invention of gadgets, but he is talking about what makes civilizations tick. This is why so much of the discussion about “modernity” and “postmodernity” is just pretentious. What we call Enlightenment …
Millennia of Bumpity Bumpity
At the point Christ came, the true faith had been kept alive up to that point, after a fashion, among the Jews. I say it was kept because of the many faithful believers among them who were looking in true faith for the Messiah. Jesus Himself said that Israel had teachers who sat in Moses’ …
Bulletphobia
When I was in high school, I took a sociology class, and it was just the kind of class you might expect. One day the teacher came in (a very nice young lady), and asked if any of us had ever been afraid of a black person. I helpfully raised my hand, and she called …
Ice Cubes and a Slice of Lemon
If we are talking about reading, writing, and ciphering, the state of government education in the United States is appalling. But if we reflect on what Hunter Baker points out in his The End of Secularism (p. 18), that more Americans believe in the virgin birth than believe in Darwinism, the failure of state education …
Jesus. Reason. Soap.
We are discussing mere Christendom as a construct for civilization. Since we have been here before, it is, more accurately, a construct for a renewed civilization. How is this necessary? C.S. Lewis once famously observed the wishful thinking of unbelievers. “In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We …