« chez aviary | Main | name calling »
July 19, 2005
manifesto
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." --Muhammad Ali
"The butterfly, a cabbage-white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight.
--Robert Graves
 |
I cannot read just one book at a time. If you'd asked me about my reading habits two years ago, I expect I would have sworn I was a one-book-at-a-time guy, but this is not the case today. I count five in progress, not counting technical books, around a half a dozen of which hover somewhere between reference reading and serious reading.
I will come back to Nouwen, I promise you, I promise me. But on my last trip past my Indiana bookshelf, I pulled Francis Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto and started reading it for the third time.
Schaeffer draws upon Samuel Rutherford, the author of Lex Rex or The Law and the Prince, which he (Schaeffer) summarizes:
What is the concept in Lex Rex? Very simply: The law is king, and if the king and the government disobey the law they are to be disobeyed. And the law is founded on the Law of God.
Scheaffer's thesis is that only God's law (meaning law based upon the Judeo-Christian scriptures) can be an appropriate basis for human governement. While Rutherford's book shook the foundations of the Divine Right of Kings in Europe in his day (it was outlawed in both England and Scotland), Schaeffer contends that today the userper is secular humanism, meaning a philosphy which holds that the universe is godless, and formed purely by chance.
Crackpot or clear-eyed visionary? The floor is open for comments.
 |
A Christian Manifesto: 25th Anniversary Edition By Francis A. Schaeffer / Crossway Books & Bibles Culture's pressing issues have not changed in the 25 years since apologist Schaeffer's original call for Christians to return to biblical truth. Showing why morality and freedom have crumbled in our society, this modern-day prophet calls for re-establishing America's Judeo-Christian foundation in order to change the course of history. Provocative as ever! 157 pages, softcover from Crossway Books. |
Posted by joel at July 19, 2005 12:35 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.chezjoel.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/333
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
