Apropos of absolutely nothing, here is Edmund Burke on the injustice of punishing men for the crimes of their predecessors. Burke, as a Christian thinker, knew that to do so was a product of the rationalism (which is, for that reason, irrational) of an "enlightened...
E.J. Hutchinson
Homer, God’s Poet
“Melanchthon Mondays” continues! I had a lot of fun reading and working on this one. This week’s poem is about Homer and poetic inspiration. Christians, I think it’s fair to say, are used to thinking of inspiration only in narrow terms: the Holy Spirit’s direct...
Melanchthon Writes a Decalogue Poem
I’ve written on the Decalogue, and specifically on the Decalogue in Melanchthon and Melanchthonianism at various times in the past. Below is a nice little epigram Melanchthon wrote on the importance of teaching the Decalogue to the young. (An emphasis easily seen...
Melanchthon’s Psalm 111
First Things recently ran my metrical translation of Philip Melanchthon's poem on the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth. You can read an accompanying essay at Mere Orthodoxy. Here is another: a version of Psalm 111. First, the Psalm in the English of the King James:...
Springs Eternal
I'll have more to say about my intentions for this blog later on. But for my first post I want to direct your attention to an essay called "Ver Erat Aeternum" that I wrote for Ad Fontes this past winter on Christians as people most at home in the season of spring. For...
Ver Erat Aeternum
Both Christian and pagan alike sense that spring is the original state of the world. Fall, on the other hand, comes from the Fall.
Hemmingsen on Mark 7
It is significant that Christ not only healed a man, but that, in order for the man to be healed, others had to bring him to Christ.
Our Daily Bread: Hemmingsen on Grateful Faith
Hemmingsen’s discussion contains a salutary reminder that we are to receive God’s good created gifts with gratitude and acknowledgment. If we do not, we are robbing God.
Hemmingsen on Three Kinds of Justice
Christian justice, as Hemmingsen defines it, is “the obedience of Christ imputed to the one who believes.” The one who is just “evangelically,” or “according to the gospel,” is the one whose sins are forgiven and to whom the justice of the Son has been imputed.
“Nursing Fathers”: The Magistrate and the Moral Law
Not many passages in the New Testament speak directly to political order. The first part of the thirteenth chapter of Romans is perhaps the most famous. I would like to focus in this essay on vv. 3-4, which may appear prima facie to be something of an interpretive crux. Are these verses descriptive or prescriptive? That is, are they simply declarative, or are they imperatival, telling us what magistrates ought to do?