Category Archives: Theology

The time has come for judgment to begin, and God’s own people are the first to be judged. 1 Peter 4:17 The thing that upset many people most during COVID, and in the permacrisis since, was the total failure of a majority of people to comprehend that there was anything fundamentally wrong. That blind attitude has persisted into the most recent manifestation of the crisis (if you don’t count monkeypox and the NATO invasion of Russia at our expense), that is the protests and riots that have many US commentators wondering what has become of English justice, and even caused a friend in the impoverished and violent state of Sri … Continue reading →

I’ve just re-read Luther’s classic The Bondage of the Will, in which he refutes the ubiquitous belief that the (fallen) human will is balanced between good and evil, able to choose either. I’ve only just got it back after an Arminian friend borrowed it to refute it twenty-two years ago, seeking to achieve against Luther what Erasmus failed to do, and not succeeding, kept it on his shelf.

If I look back over the thirteen years of this blog, its various preoccupations might be summed up in the idea of “threats to the Christian faith.” Being a Christian, I might also interpret that as “threats to the human soul” or even as “threats to the well-being of mankind.” Even Richard Dawkins seems to be on board with that last conclusion now!

More to the point, why did it start? After all, there is no Old Testament precedent for the gift of tongues, and (unlike the ecstatic glossolalia shared by many groups) it is not a common feature of religion like prophecy, divine healing,or exorcism.