Taming the Wild

The West suffers from an unhealthy view of wilderness. Wilderness is often called innocent, pure, untrammeled, sacred, and God’s country. It is land not (yet) desecrated or sullied by human development. Humans impose themselves upon the “natural condition” of wilderness in the interest of habitation. Our development is, however necessary, an impure act. The governing …

A Reformed Perspective on Natural Beauty

The universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God. ~ Belgic Confession of Faith Swiss Alps The Protestant Reformers spoke often of the beauty of creation. Indeed, natural beauty[1] plays an important role in some …

Groundwork for a Reformed Theology of Public Aesthetics

The Apostle Paul said that “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14). How one goes about loving one’s neighbor is the subject of much discussion and controversy in Christianity. Among Reformed Christians, the debate on Christian public engagement between the Two-Kingdom advocates, the Kuyperians, the …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 3): Borrowing methods, not concepts

In two recent blog posts describing the methodology of the Reformed Orthodox writers, I noted first that it was “nominally Aristotelian”, stressing, however, that it was so because that methodology was ancient and familiar, and second, that while they employed that methodology, they did so while avoiding Aristotelian concepts, employing Scriptural “content” instead. William J. …

Sin

Just how serious is it? And who has the correct understanding of its seriousness? Rome’s view of sin is based on an allegorical interpretation of Luke 10:30, as I describe below, as well as a view of reality provided by the neoplatonist imposter Pseudo-Dionysius. The Reformers had a much more honestly biblical view of sin, …