Archive for October, 2009

October 26, 2009 3

Notes Toward a Thesis: Theologies of Sickness

By Robert Minto in Education, Plans, Scholarship, Sickness

The time has come to write my sample essay for graduate school applications. I’d like to take it as an opportunity for substantial theological work that will—I hope—successfully involve careful historical theology, exegesis, and personal theological reflection.
The topic I’m going to write about is Sickness & Theology. There are three possible relationships here, I think:

Special [...]

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October 24, 2009 0

Thielicke On Conservatism

By Robert Minto in Appreciation, Conservatism

I do not claim to be a conservative, but I think that Thielicke’s positive characterization of conservatism is the best and most succinct I have ever encountered:
It must [...] be pointed out that in origin the term “conservative” has nothing to do with reaction. When it became a slogan for opposition to the French Revolution [...]

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October 23, 2009 0

Education from Below

By Robert Minto in Education, Faith, Hope

(The following is an extract from an essay published in Crossings, an intellectual journal on the Dordt campus.)
How shall I describe education—the process of obtaining access to a tradition and power to extend it?
Imagine the tradition one desires to be educated into as a huge, over-populated city—at Dordt, a tradition of Christian humanism, as well [...]

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October 23, 2009 0

Thoughts About “God in the Gallery” (Pt. 1)

By Robert Minto in Appreciation, Art, Books

In some ways, Chapter 5 of Siedell’s God in the Gallery, entitled “Art Criticism” is prescriptively central to the book. One of Siedell’s foremost desires for concrete change involves replacing the Schaefferian and Rookmakerian vision of the Christian artist with a robust general engagement by Christians of art as it is. He argues that we [...]

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October 3, 2009 24

Against Expository Preaching

By Robert Minto in Criticism, Gospel, Preaching, Rhetoric, Scripture

I am currently reading Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, by Bryan Chapell. I haven’t finished the book yet, so some of what I am about to say may have to be modified at a later date. Still, I have some objections to this whole movement of expository preaching (to the degree that I’ve been [...]

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October 1, 2009 0

Familiolatry

By Robert Minto in Family, Idols, Politics

The following was written as an editorial for the Dordt student newspaper.
Among the idols we love to smash are pleasure, power, and reason. Among the idols we love to smash in others more than ourselves are self-righteousness and wealth. Among the idols we mostly fail to smash (or see for that [...]

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