"Principles do not fight by themselves. Principles are always incarnate in a particular method." -- Douglas Wilson, Rules for Reformers
Our theology always comes out of our fingertips and our fingertips end up doing the fighting. Our principles make themselves manifest in our methods. What we believe becomes how we behave. All that to say, it is not only essential that we get a hold of the right principles, but that they get a hold of us. Simply nodding your skull in assent to the power of a particular principle is not the same as moving your skeleton into a particular practice as a result of believing said principle.
"All good things come to a point, swords for instance." -- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
You cannot swing a principle at your enemy, but you can swing a sword. Yet you shouldn't swing a sword unless you have a principled reason for doing so. It should go without saying that you should have a good reason to swing sharp objects around. So principles must swing if they want to do any damage and swinging must be predicated on principle, lest it be reduced to butchery.
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