In C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock, in the essay “Miracles” we read this: The experience of a miracle in fact requires two conditions. First, we must believe in a normal stability of Nature, which means we must recognize […]
Theology
A ‘Protestant-ish’ Argument for Icons?
Is there an appropriate place for icons in the 21st Century Protestant Church? There’s nothing new about the debate regarding sacred images and iconography, but I’ve gained some recent insights on the subject. In chapter 13 of Diarmaid McCullough’s work, Christianity: […]
The Real Significance of the Tithe
The tithe has been a matter of controversy in Jewish and Christian circles, I assume, since it was first promulgated. [Islam, instead of 10% of income, proposes a contribution of 2.5% of one’s wealth per year.] Early in my Christian […]
The Sin of Entitlement
Early in my Christian life I was struck by a fascinating quote in C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letter #21. On the sin of peevishness, he wrote, Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And […]
What Christian Reconstruction Gave Me
As everyone who investigates me online knows, in my 30s I was a Christian Reconstructionist. Part of the appeal of that to younger people in that era was the specific blueprints for society and personal action that seemed to fill […]
The Theonomization of Anabaptism
At the time of the Reformation, certain groups emerged which said that one ought to be baptized again [despite one’s infant baptism] when one came to conscious faith in Christ. Therefore, they were called Anabaptists, which means ‘again-baptizers’. But they […]
Did Jesus Give Us Our Individualism?
Patrick Deneen has warned that modern ‘liberalism’, which includes American style conservatism, has stressed the individual and dominion over nature so much as to weaken community. In trying to liberate the individual, the state, and for conservatives the market, expand to protect […]
Jesus Did Not Teach Universal ‘Acceptance, Tolerance, and Inclusion’
We are often told today that Jesus taught radical ‘acceptance, tolerance, and inclusion’. Well, he did open the door to many the Pharisees thought beyond hope, and on the other hand he excluded many of the Pharisees themselves. Let’s start with […]
Why I’m Not Ultimately a Pessimist
These are strange times indeed. The traditional ‘fusion-conservatism’ has been shattered, to be replaced by a form of nationalism that in some forms seems to lean in the unfortunate direction of white nationalism. Some of the old social conservatives have […]
James K. A. Smith and the Pentecostal World View
Is there such a thing as a ‘Pentecostal philosophy’? James K. A. Smith says there is. They don’t necessarily talk about it in ways we are accustomed to, but he says they have one. And here are its major elements […]