I’m not a Calvinist, so I don’t subscribe to TULIP, hence *total* depravity is a bridge too far for me. However, we are certainly fallen and the consequences are always with us. Original Sin, or better and more nuanced, Ancestral Sin, so as to avoid the slippery slope of St. Augustine’s implied “original guilt,” is de facto all about us. We only need to look at ourselves and the world for the evidence we have been, are, and always will be a bloody mess (until Kingdom come). But, as you rightly intimate, not giving up and fighting on are also requirements, even virtues. A bit of threading the needle is our call-to-action. It’s a cocktail of proper pessimism and optimism. Ain’t easy to measure out the proportions, frankly, and the demand to do so begs a lot of questions about *how* we fight on and never give up. Fodder for additional consideration, at least for moi. Thank you for a much needed reminder for Conservatives to be on guard against our own version of building utopia. Under the Mercy.
I’m not a Calvinist, so I don’t subscribe to TULIP, hence *total* depravity is a bridge too far for me. However, we are certainly fallen and the consequences are always with us. Original Sin, or better and more nuanced, Ancestral Sin, so as to avoid the slippery slope of St. Augustine’s implied “original guilt,” is de facto all about us. We only need to look at ourselves and the world for the evidence we have been, are, and always will be a bloody mess (until Kingdom come). But, as you rightly intimate, not giving up and fighting on are also requirements, even virtues. A bit of threading the needle is our call-to-action. It’s a cocktail of proper pessimism and optimism. Ain’t easy to measure out the proportions, frankly, and the demand to do so begs a lot of questions about *how* we fight on and never give up. Fodder for additional consideration, at least for moi. Thank you for a much needed reminder for Conservatives to be on guard against our own version of building utopia. Under the Mercy.
Very well done.
Never give in. Never give up!
Ever!