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Dorothy Sayers on the Doctrine of Hell

“[T]here seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the ‘cruel and abominable medieval doctrine of Hell’ or ‘the childish and grotesque medieval imagery of physical fire and worms . . . ‘ But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of Hell is not ‘medieval’: it is Christ’s. It is not a device of ‘medieval priestcraft’ for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from ‘medieval superstition,’ but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it. . . . [O]ne cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.”

~ Dorothy Sayers, “Introductory Papers on Dante“

(HT: Justin Taylor)

The Enlightenment as Christian Heresy

“One way of understanding [the Enlightenment] is to think of it as a Christian heresy. What Christian faith had offered was retained while the Source from which that offer had been made was rejected. The prerogatives that had belonged to God did not simply disappear; now they reappeared in human beings. The revelation he had given now reappeared in the form of natural reason, which would do what revelation had done but without the discomfort of requiring humanity to submit to God from whom the revelation had come; the idea of salvation was retained but transformed into the drive for human perfectibility, at first achieved by moral striving and then, as we know it today, by psychological technique; grace became effort; the life of faith became the hope of personal growth; and eschatology became progress (what Lord Acton called the religion of those who have none).”

~ David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Powers (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2005), 30.

On Virtue

“Virtue may be defined as an activity of the whole person in conformity with love of God and love of neighbor.”

~ Benjamin W. Farley, In Praise of Virtue (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 1995), 160.

The Lordship of Christ & the Kingdoms of this World

“Jesus Christ is Lord. That is the first and final assertion Christians make about all of reality, including politics. Believers now assert by faith what one day will be manifest to the sight of all: every earthly sovereignty is subordinate to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. The Church is the bearer of that claim. Because the Church is pledged to the Kingdom proclaimed by Jesus, it must maintain a critical distance from all the kingdoms of the world, whether actual or proposed. Christians betray their Lord if, in theory or practice, they equate the Kingdom of God with any political, social or economic order of this passing time. At best, such orders permit the proclamation of the gospel of the Kingdom and approximate, in small part, the freedom, peace, and justice for which we hope.”

~ Richard John Neuhaus, quoted by D. A. Carson in Christ & Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 203.

Spanning Two Eternities

“The world-wide preaching of the gospel throughout the historical process is the bridge which spans the two eternities of past promise and future fulfillment.”

~ John Stott, Guard the Truth (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 170.

Jesus Did Not Arrive Unannounced

“The prophets searched. Angels longed to see. And the disciples didn’t understand. But Moses, the prophets, and all the Old Testament Scriptures had spoken about it — that Jesus would come, suffer, and then be glorified. God began to tell a story in the Old Testament, the ending of which the audience eagerly anticipated. But the Old Testament audience was left hanging. The plot was laid out but the climax was delayed. The unfinished story begged an ending. In Christ, God has provided the climax to the Old Testament story. Jesus did not arrive unannounced; his coming was declared in advance in the Old Testament, not just in explicit prophecies of the Messiah but by means of the stories of all of the events, characters, and circumstances in the Old Testament. God was telling a larger, overarching, unified story. From the account of creation in Genesis to the final stories of the return from exile, God progressively unfolded his plan of salvation. And the Old Testament account of that plan always pointed in some way to Christ.”

~ Tremper Longman III & J. Alan Groves (foreword) in George M. Schwab, Hope in the Midst of a Hostile World (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2006), x.

The Key to Understanding the Struggle Between Science and the Supernatural

Harvard biologist, Richard Lewontin, speaks frankly about the way in which a prior commitment to materialism functions in much of the scientific community. Refreshing to read such honesty.

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

~ “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review of Books, January 7, 1997, 31.

The Existence of Evil & the Reality of God

“Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness [if there were no God and we just evolved]? I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live. . . . A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort . . . and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (. . . and not just an illusion of some sort), then you have a powerful . . . argument [for the reality of God].”

~ Alvin Plantinga, quoted by Timothy Keller in The Reason for God (New York, NY: Dutton, 2008), 26.

The Worth & Excellency of a Soul

“The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.”

~ Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (Harrisburg, Va.: Sprinkle Publications, 1986), 62.