my burg

The following words are taken from "Surmounting the Clash of Worlds," a lecture delivered by Carl Henry on July 7, 1989, at the dedication of the new campus of Tokyo Christian Institute (which later became Tokyo Christian University).  This call to wholistic Christian thinking sets naturalism and biblical theism in the sharpest of contrasts...    "We are self-deceived if we allow naturalistic speculation to parade as something modern, when in fact it was repudiated almost twenty-five  hundred years ago by the great philosophers of Greece.  Pagan though they were, the classic Greek sages recognized that naturalism cannot bring  into being or sustain a stable society and, in fact, robs human life of distinctive value and meaning.  The Greeks insisted that if time and change  control all reality, and if truth and right are subject to ongoing revision, then human civilization becomes impossible; moreover human life loses  fixed meaning and spec...

"We traditional Christians in America can learn from both Eastern European examples [of Czechoslovakia and Poland under Communist rule] .  We face nothing so terrible as the Czechs did under Soviet domination, of course, but the more insidious forces of secular liberalism are steadily achieving the same aim: robbing us and future generations of our religious beliefs, moral values, and cultural memory, and making us pawns of forces beyond our control.  This is why we have to focus tightly and without hesitation on education."    ~ Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option , p. 145. 

"All Christian learning must be for the sake of worship and service of God in the world, and we are deceived if we think that our own schematic skills or speculative theories or politico-economic proposals make the Bible meaningful or credible to the contemporary world. The case for Christianity does not rest on our ingenuity; it rests upon the incarnate and risen Lord.  The Bible is meaningful and credible as it stands; it is we, not the Scriptures, that need to be salvaged.  Unless evangelical education understands Christianity's salvific witness in terms of the whole self -- intellect, volition, emotion, conscience, imagination -- and of the world in its total need -- justice, peace, stewardship and much else -- it cannot adequately confront a planet that has sagged out of moral and spiritual orbit." ~ Carl F. H. Henry, Confessions Of A Theologian (Word Books, 1986), p. 76. 

Machen concludes his work, Christianity and Liberalism , with a call for renewed commitment to Christian education, especially within our homes and churches.  Note especially the final paragraph: [T]he most important thing of all--there must be a renewal of Christian education. The rejection of Christianity is due to various causes. But a very potent cause is simple ignorance. In countless cases, Christianity is rejected simply because men have not the slightest notion of what Christianity is. An outstanding fact of recent Church history is the appalling growth of ignorance in the Church. Various causes, no doubt, can be assigned for this lamentable development. The development is due partly to the general decline of education--at least so far as literature and history are concerned. The schools of the present day are being ruined by the absurd notion that education should follow the line of least resistance, and that something can be "drawn out" of the mind before anything...