So check this out. Emergent Christians and pomothinkers like to emphasize that the faith is a story with a storyline, and want to deemphasize the rigid creedal and doctrinal aspects of the faith. Let’s just leave that last bit aside for a moment, and take a closer look at these “story Christians.” The most striking …
The False Choice Between Dehydrated Truth and Gumby Truth
As I have mentioned before, I am listening to N.T. Wright’s very fine lectures on Jesus and the victory of God. In these lectures, as in much of his writing, Wright rarely misses an opportunity to take a swing at “timeless truths.” He does this, not because he is a relativist, but because he is …
What’s Shakin’ Next
I just got my copy of David Wells’ new book — The Courage to be Protestant — and it promises to be a magnificent read. I am not very far into it, but it is the capstone of four great books that came before it. But even though I just started, I was arrested by …
The Problem With Third Ways
A lot of Christians know that the language of Scripture requires us to develop and maintain a distinctive voice. And thus it is that when they are in the process of being swept up by the latest wind of doctrine, they claim that they are doing this as a “third way.” Lured and enticed by …
A Fluffy Will to Power
Apparently, the Illinois shooter sent a copy of The Antichrist to his girl friend before the shooting. Professors of this and that have been hastening to assure us all that this action represents a drastic misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s will to power, informing us that the will to power needs to be understood in a civilized, …
Nietzsche the Fusser
Chesterton gets Nietzsche right. He does this, not necessarily as a portrait painter, but as a brilliant caricaturist. Have you ever wondered how the great caricaturists do it — drawing a nose that is three feet long, and yet you recognize the person? “And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and …
Gratitude for the Laws
Enlightenment modernist types want laws to run everything, all by themselves, and they want this in every department of human thought. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about logic, or science, or economics. They want the whole schbeal run by the law of non-contradiction, the law of gravity, and the law of supply and …
Three Winter Quilts
Here is an inchoate thought or two related to at least one blessing that has come out of the emergent church movement. I don’t have anything really specific yet, but I think there really is something to this. Summarize it this way: conservatives have a talent for taking over edginess. I’ll talk about the emergent …
And It Figures
One of the most obvious characteristics of our relativistic, postmodern times is a schizophrenic approach to different kinds of authority. The radical individualism pioneered by modernity, and carried on by its sham-alternative, postmodernity, is an individualism that reacts violently to all forms of godly authority, and capitulates immediately in the face of brow-beated bluster. Relativism …
Soi-Disant Postmodernism
In my various posts on the subject of postmodernism, I have in time past advanced an argument that I believe to be a real pippin. But thus far, I have not really seen anyone attempt to engage with it. This is either because the argument is beneath contempt, and it would sully the minds of …