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…had the South been peopled by nineteenth-century Scots, Welshmen, and Ulstermen, the course of Southern history would doubtless have been radically different. Nineteenth-century Scottish and Scotch-Irish immigrants did in fact fit quite
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“What we do in the crisis always depends on whether we see the difficulties in the light of God, or God in the shadow of the difficulties.”
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“As already noted, what happens with the criterion of "love" in a culture that highly values "freedom" is that "love" is defined in terms of "freedom." The "loving thing to do" becomes letting people do what they want to do, as long as the rights of others are not infringed. Like cake batter, love takes the shape of the mold into which it is poured. In the West, this mold consists of liberation and equality. No society will stand with so meager a basis for thinking through its great moral challenges. Citizens of Western culture lack a robust enough moral vocabulary and ethic to explain why they object to things their consciences feel are wrong. In the public square, they are restricted to the language of freedom and equality in all moral matters. Such a "vapid" ethic fails to provide sensible answers for a number of great moral questions: abortion, euthanasia, gun laws, freedom of speech, sexual ethics, and so forth.”
― Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Tradition
― Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Tradition
“Without the infinite-personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make “systems.” In today’s speech we would call them “game plans.” A person can erect some type of structure, some type of limited frame, in which he lives, shutting himself in that frame and not looking beyond it. This game plan can be one of a number of things. It can sound high and noble, such as talking in an idealistic way about the greatest good for the greatest number. Or it can be a scientist’s concentrating on some small point of science so that he does not have to think of any of the big questions, such as why things exist at all. It can be a skier concentrating for years on knocking one-tenth of a second from a downhill race. Or it can as easily be a theological word game within the structure of the existential methodology. That is where modern people, building only on themselves, have come, and that is where they are now.”
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“A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child and the hide of a rhinoceros. His biggest problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart.”
― Practical Wisdom for Pastors: Words of Encouragement and Counsel for a Lifetime of Ministry
― Practical Wisdom for Pastors: Words of Encouragement and Counsel for a Lifetime of Ministry
“The early church had much more than a collection of social practices upon which they did not reflect carefully. The early church ethics were formed in the context of a Judaism that had thought long and hard about its ethic based on Mosaic law, over against the practices of surrounding cultures. The early church's ethics were a further reflection on how that long history of Jewish ethics had to be rethought in light of Jesus Christ. Rethinking the faith involved an interpretation of authoritative Scripture and a continued use of the Law in ethical matters.”
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Samuel’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Samuel’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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