Tag: www.chalcedon.edu

Mark Rushdoony, ‘The Sweep of History’

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Spot of theology, anyone?

Our Chalcedon president, Mark Rushdoony, wrote this for our magazine in 2004, reminding us that, as Christians, we walk by faith and not by sight. Because what we see, in this fallen world, can be disheartening.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-sweep-of-history

As Bible readers we should know that history has  a purpose, organized by a Person, God, who is infinitely wiser, more righteous, and mightier than we could ever be. From Genesis to Revelation, God makes His purpose known. There’s really no excuse for believing history doesn’t have a purpose.

We don’t worship the works of our own hands, we don’t worship things, the state, or science. We worship God, who hears our prayers and moves, often invisibly to us, throughout history, shepherding it to its objective.

And we are His.

You Can’t Be a Christian and a Humanist

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Unlimited government–it always works!

Over the years, I’ve found “the Humanist Manifesto II” highly enlightening when it comes to trying to understand the often bizarre practices and beliefs of this current age. As a world view, humanism has a lot to answer for. Replacing the all-righteous God with fat-headed, fallible men is never going to turn out well.

“Choosing the Curse” is part of a series I wrote a few years ago, for the Chalcedon magazine, on the baneful effects of the philosophy so clearly laid out in Humanist Manifesto II.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-humanist-manifesto-ii-choosing-the-curse

This is the pseudo-religion that seeks to replace Christianity and literally dominate the world, through science and an all-powerful state.

If you can think of anything more nightmarish than that, please let me know.

From ‘A Word in Season’

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R.J. Rushdoony looked to the Book Joshua as the inspiration for this essay, part of his collection of essays, A Word in Season:

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve…”: (Joshua 24:15).

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-choice

“We live in an era,” Rushdoony wrote, “which calls for courage and resolute choices, not moral indecision.”

Amen.

P.S.–You may have been frustrated by the slowness of Chalcedon’s website. I’m happy to report this problem has been fixed.

Flashback: ‘Nightline’ Tackles Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

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“Evolution or else!”

I reviewed this Nightline episode back in 2005.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/nightline-tackles-evolution-vs-intelligent-design

Do you remember this case? The local school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, expressed some skepticism of Evolution: so in roared the ACLU, guns ablaze, threatening to destroy the school district with lawsuits unless the board recanted and confessed Evolution to be the one and only truth. That’s how settled science stays settled.

Thing is, even with all these strong-arm tactics, even with them owning the culture, the Evolution side still can’t seal the deal. They just can’t get a majority of the people to believe in it.

Maybe it’s kind of hard to believe in a “scientific” doctrine that can only be kept alive with threats of force. Somehow “believe in this or we’ll destroy your school district” just doesn’t sound all that persuasive.

And maybe it’s awfully hard to understand why any expression of disbelief in Evolution calls down such a violent response. Why should they care so much? There’s something rather crazy about the whole business. Why do they feel so threatened if some tax preparer in Dover, Pennsylvania, isn’t buying into Darwinism?

Someone at Nightline should’ve asked those questions.

My ‘Bell Mountain’ Interview

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It was eight years ago, but I think this is still the best interview I’ve had–largely due to the thoughtful questions asked by Chalcedon’s Andrea Schwartz. Here’s the audio for the whole thing, about 23 minutes long. I apologize, in advance, for my slow way of talking. As for my voice, it’s ideally suited for mime.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/audio/lee-duigon-bell-mountain-notable-people

At the time, I had three Bell Mountain books in print, with No. 4, The Last Banquet, ready to go to press. Here in 2018, I’m waiting for No. 11, The Temptation, to come out, and writing No. 12, His Mercy Endureth Forever. 

How many more to come?

As many as God gives me to write.

More Left-Wing Pseudo-Christianity

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Back in 2006 I reviewed socialist Jim Wallis’ The Call to Conversion. It’s as revolting now as it was then.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/a-review-of-the-call-to-conversion-why-faith-is-always-personal-but-never-private

Wallis was much more prominent in 2006 than he is now. Back then, he still clung, however feebly, to Biblical sexual morality. But after he took the plunge for “gay marriage,” that made him just another liberal with no distinguishing marks; so his stock as an oracle has gone down.

This little book of his is a spectacular example of the leftids’ use of straw men in an argument. Wallis has a black belt in the martial art of knocking down opinions that no one actually holds.

False prophets abound. This is one of them.

Does God Tell Us to Love Our Children ‘Unconditionally’?

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In this latest installment of Chalcedon’s (www.chalcedon.edu) Homeschooling Help, Andrea Schwartz and Nancy Wilk tackle a question that’s a lot stickier than it looks: Does the word of God instruct us to love our children unconditionally? It’s about 30 minutes long, and I guarantee you’ll find it thought-provoking.

The stumbling-block is the word “unconditional,” which presupposes something that does not, in fact, exist: “All love is conditional love,” as Andrea and Nancy make clear. Like, my wife loves me; but if I did certain things, you can bet she wouldn’t love me anymore. So I don’t do those things!

I find myself on tenterhooks (what exactly are tenterhooks? anybody know?) because Andrea and Nancy do not rule out the occasional spanking as a legitimate, appropriate tool of parental discipline. Ooooh! To think it actually takes courage to say that…

Andrea is Chalcedon’s homeschooling mentor. You wouldn’t believe how hard she worked, trying to teach me to perform certain computer functions. I can personally testify to her patience!

Thomas Sowell vs. ‘Intellectuals’

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In 2010 Thomas Sowell blasted The Smartest People in the World with his book, Intellectuals and Society, delving deep into the question of just how stupid these people are. I reviewed the book for Chalcedon.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/a-review-of-intellectuals-and-society

As you will have seen from my review (if you’ve read it), Dr. Sowell didn’t devote any effort to discovering why intellectuals have such asinine beliefs. I would have liked to have asked him why he didn’t get into that, but he wasn’t available at the time. I admire Dr. Sowell and I would love to have interviewed him.

The question not having been addressed by the author, it remained for the reviewer to do his best with it.

 

I Review ‘Fawkes’

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In 1605 there was a plot to blow up the English Parliament, with King James I, and replace the Protestant government with Catholics. The idea was to hide many barrels of gunpowder under the Parliament house and blow it sky-high. This has come to be known and memorialized as the Gunpowder Plot. One of the plotters, Guy Fawkes, was actually caught just before he could light the fuse.

Sounds like it’d made a great historical novel.

But Nadine Brandes has written it as a Young Adults fantasy novel, and I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I just don’t get it.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/book-review-fawkes-by-nadine-brandes

We love to read, we want to pass that on to our children: there’s no limit to what the voracious reader can learn. But we don’t want to be reading a load of baloney, just so we can say we turned a lot of pages.

I think the reason this fantasy didn’t quite make it is because there was no reason to write it as a fantasy in the first place.

Too bad. We would like to understand how the conditions of religious life in England in those days, ostensibly Christian religion, could have led to the Gunpowder Plot. We would like to use its history as a guide to avoiding those mistakes!

But we’ll need other books for that.

He Just Won’t Stay in the Tomb!

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Back in 2009 this was just the latest “study” intended to prove that “religion”–what they really mean is Christianity–is on its way out, thank Darwin, imagine there’s no heaven, imagine there’s no hell, blah-blah-blah (“Blather Bingo!”)…

I took some pains to cover the American Religious Identification Survey and found it somewhat less than–well, pick the word. Honest? Candid? You decide.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/survey-that-says-christianity-is-failing-gets-failing-grade-from-critics

In reality, we find that the Christians who are leaving liberal feel-good churches are not ceasing to be Christians; and that Jesus Christ, who was crucified and shut up in the tomb, yea, He lives! They keep putting the stone back, and He keeps rolling it away.

I will never understand what motivates anybody to devoting his or her excuse for a life to “proving” that there is no God and convincing others to shed their religious faith.

I don’t think I even want to ask what it is that they have faith in.