Quotes from Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Modern Christians should not mistake our post-Victorian sense of propriety for moral purity.

To be free, one must have the critical-thinking skills that inoculate against the alluring rhetoric that pervades contemporary society, rhetoric that is constantly seeking to undermine freedom for the sake of varied narrow interests. It is an old story, and Daniel Scoggin, the CEO of Great Hearts, recognizes this reality when he reminds his constituency that "each generation must earn its freedom anew".

Scripture is much more than distant and dusty words spoken by God long ago; Scripture is a direct confrontation and encounter with God in the present moment. God's speaking is relocated into the present moment in the hearing of God's Word.

The Sermon on the Mount proves that sin is a condition of our inmost being; although our sinful nature is atoned for in the cross and our failures freely forgiven, we must never willingly cultivate habits that Scripture condemns.

Restless hearts and anxious minds find peace in justification. Frenetic lives of self-justification have rest in the salvation of Jesus Christ. The incessant need to prove our own worthiness and our failure to ever do so are nailed to the cross, buried in the tomb, and put to death forever.

more than that, the doctrine of vocation amounts to a comprehensive doctrine of the Christian life, having to do with faith and sanctification, grace and good works. It is a key to Christian ethics. It shows how Christians can influence their culture. It transfigures ordinary, everyday life with the presence of God.

Original Sin has great marketing potential.

Propositions are true or false. Images are not.

Heaven built on earth by human hands is not the same as eternal life. Again, Christianity always has to be more than a cultural religion.

The author relates that the word "OBSCENE" springs from the concept in Greek drama that certain actions would be performed outside the scene or off the stage. He clarifies that the Greeks did not shy away from shocking actions, but they knew that portraying them in the audience's view would drown out the emotional subtlety of the character development and ethical dilemmas.

As Emerson observes, "The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry."4

Universal literacy, taken for granted today, was a direct result of the Reformation's reemphasis upon the centrality of Bible reading

The Church does not depend on power, social prestige, rhetorical manipulation, or human-designed programs. All it has are the Word and Sacraments, which, though they seem weak to the world and to all theologies of glory, in fact carry the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit.

Instead of tinkering with style, for better or worse, churches need to deal, in a serious way, with the content of their teaching. Specifically, they need to find effective ways to rescue people from their life-and-death spiritual problems, particularly those that are characteristic of our age.

The popular culture gives us books that offer entertainment but no ideas. High culture gives us books that offer ideas but no entertainment. The best books manage to do both.

In studying the Bible as a young man, I found intimations of the idea that forms of media favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture.

history has shown that the removal of all restraints of reason and morality leads not to liberation but to fascism.

Lutheran spirituality begins with the insight that all human effort to reach God is futile. The will, to use Luther's term, is in bondage—not only can we not fulfill the moral law perfectly, on the deepest level, we do not want to.

But the Law is the prelude to the Gospel. Those broken by the Law are convinced of their need and of their inability to save themselves. Then the message that God does it all comes as an astounding relief, as good news. Those who despair of achieving perfection by themselves can hear the message of the cross—that they can find totally free forgiveness through the work of Jesus Christ—and cling to it, desperately, with every fiber of their being.

Our mediator claims all of our sins and has paid for them with His blood. He provides all of the good works we need, clothing us in His—not our—righteousness. This is what it means to be saved.

Just as physical laws apply to Christians and non-Christians alike (Matthew 5:45), the laws of art apply universally. Aesthetic principles, no less than scientific principles, are grounded in the created order and are a manifestation of God's design.

It is true that large numbers of Americans continue to hold transcendental ethics and approach these issues very differently (there is an absolute right to life). Nevertheless, in public policy debates and in popular culture, the Judeo-Christian approach to ethical issues seems anachronistic and is not taken seriously. Once ethics become immanent and provisional, rather than transcendent and absolute, it will be more difficult to object to fascist policies.

our age in its honest moments admits its lostness.

Human sin and God's grace are the two poles of Lutheran spirituality. To be sure, these are intrinsic to all of Christianity, but in Lutheranism they are both heightened. They are resolved in the principle by which, it is said, the church stands or falls: justification by grace through faith.