The Sordid Boon, part 2

** This is part two of three-part review of Craig Gay's Way of the (Modern) World; or, Why It's Tempting to Live as if God Doesn't Exist.In the first four chapters, Gay outlines and analyzes a few modern American institutions that are, in the worst sense, worldly (i.e., that push us toward a practical atheism), and offers glimpses of a “theology of personhood” (mentioned in the first part of this review) at the end of each section before focusing on it directly in the last chapter of the book (he considers this theology, based as it is on social trinitarianism, to be a major antidote to the ills he describes throughout the book). Regarding these four American institutions, we must:place human aspirations (protecting and preserving...

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A Reluctant Messiah?

"The Truth" by Painter Michael D'Antuono, which will be unveiled on President Obama's 100th Day in Office at NYC's Union Square Geez, this is enough to make a premillennial dispensationalist out of you (but, on the other hand, I find secular science fiction to be far more interesting). All things considered, I largely appreciate the public image of our president, despite the fact that my libertarian ideals recoil from many of his policies. I would like to think that if he caught wind of this endeavor by D'Antuono, that he'd distance himself entirely from it. I'm reminded of St. Paul and his careful intention to speak of Jesus, the true Messiah, as a direct confrontation to any and all imperial cults—ancient or modern. Here's to hoping...

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The Sordid Boon

Today begins a three-part review on Craig Gay's Way of the (Modern) World; or, Why It's Tempting to Live as if God Doesn't Exist. I first read this book about eight years ago. We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! For this, for every thing, we are out of tune; It moves us not.⎯Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; ⎯William Wordsworth,  The world is too much with us, ll. 4, 8–12. Every four years, the American nation turns its deficient...

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Well-Digging

Carl Trueman, licentiate in the OPC and professor of historical theology and church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, has written a provocative review of David Wells' Courage to be Protestant. It's provocative, not because of his twofold  conclusion (such has been said before), but because of his primary insight in substituting "consumerism with capitalism throughout the book," which, according to Trueman, would make Wells' argument "even more powerful because it would reveal to us the full power of the forces at play in the transformation of church life here [in the modern West]." Trueman goes on:Consumerism is not some accidental, aberrant by-product of the West; it is the epiphenomenon of capitalism, a system within which we must all today live, move, and have our...

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