Sublime

The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong do not exist. As Dostoyevsky said, “All things are permitted.” But man cannot live this way. So he makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.

His basic hermeneutic for understanding the Bible was to ask the question of every passage: Is this law, or is this gospel?

1. Was the Lord’s statement “I am the way…. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), relative or absolute? Can men come to a Father of whom they have never heard?

Those black students drove me back to the primary art forms of the black religious experience by refusing to accept a prefabricated theology from the lips of James Cone. I began once more to listen to the heartbeat of black life as reflected in the song and speech of black people. As I did so, I asked myself, What is theology? What is the substance

It is of course possible to assume that black religion and white religion are essentially the same, since white people introduced “Christianity” to black people. However, that assumption will deprive the theologian of vital insights into black religious thought forms, because it fails to recognize the significant connection between thought and

Holiness is essential to the correct knowledge of divine things and the great security from error. . . . Wherever you find vital piety, there you find the doctrines of the fall, of depravity, of regeneration, of atonement, and of the deity of Jesus Christ. . . . Keep your hearts with all diligence, for out of them are the issues of life. . . .

Owen Strachan wrote that we should be “spider-sense wary about the ‘Christian teaching is a stumbling block to the gospel’ argument.” He said that it is “a devil’s bargain.”

In thinking about things on this deeper level, Kuyper wanted to be sure that we keep the very basic differences among these created spheres in mind. To talk simply about “civil society” is to ignore the rich diversity of the created spheres. Families are different than churches. Art guilds are different than groups of scientists working on a common