Augustinian Platonism

My lovely wife picked up a cheap book for me yesterday at the library sale : The Age of Reform 1250-1550. [50 cents!]
The author, Steven Ozment, outlines Augustine’s modification of Platonism in a chart which I have reproduced here.

Ozment writes:
Augustine replaced the Platonic doctrine of reconciliation with his own distinctive doctrine of “divine illumination,” one [...]

Nidal Hasan and Secular America

I have written in the past about the coexistence of Islam and Secularism; (here and here for example). According to the Washington Post, Islamic murderer Nidal Hasan gave a presentation to the Army about which the Post says:
Under the “Conclusions” page, Hasan wrote that “Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by [...]

Against Evangelical Hipsters

In the Summer 2009 issue of The City there is a superb piece of writing that diagnoses a creature that I come across quite a bit online and sometimes in the flesh up in D.C. – the evangelical hipster.  John Mark Reynolds wrote the piece, where he diagnoses the persona of these individuals:
Secularists should stop [...]

Catholic Idolatry

Mark Horne has a helpful post on why he is not a Roman Catholic. An excerpt:

Idolatry is a huge sin and praying through icons (whether 3d or 2d) is idolatry.  I cannot possibly engage in such a practice, allow anyone in my guardianship to do so, or excuse such a thing, without falling into rank [...]

Too Much Information

It seems like the challenge I face in this world is that I am drowning under waves of information. Twitter feeds, Facebook stream, Google Reader constantly shooting more articles at me. Newspapers arriving at the door, books glaring from the shelf, papers on various subjects. Movies to watch, shows to keep up with, sports talk [...]

Our leaders

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about British Prime Ministers and what he said applies entirely to our elected leaders:
We like to persuade ourselves that our leaders betray the trust imposed in them and distort the aspirations of those who elect them. Actually they represent us all too exactly…No one is miscast. Each leaves the country appreciably poorer [...]

our mad world

Since we are encased within our society we can sometimes forget how insane it really is. A conversation I had yesterday reminded me of the deep weird that we live in. Our women fill their bodies with chemicals to prevent them from fertility for years and years. Later, when they are older and may decide [...]

“populations that we don’t want to have too many of”

Unbelievable. Read this horrible (and coldly murderous) quote from Justice Ginsburg in the NYT:
Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?
JUSTICE [...]

Beale on the OT in the NT

Writing in the journal Irish Biblical Studies [Volume 21, November 1999], Greg Beale talks about the use of OT scripture in the NT and says:
I gave the analogy of picking an apple off a tree and making it part of a decorative table arrangement of fruit. The new context does not obliterate the apple’s original [...]

State vs. family

In a prescient statement, Frederick Engels wrote:
With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they [...]

The Church is the Temple

James Jordan expounds on the Church:
I think a watershed in our  understanding of the Epistles is what kind of context we put them into. To  be crass about it (I intend no insult; I just want to get on with it): Either
1. The apostolic church started from scratch after the OT order  was cancelled, [...]

Spiritual Blindness in the Academy

James Jordan has written an excellent critique of why Christian scholars and secular scholars are in thrall to false ideas. The entire article is here, this is an excerpt:
The current scholarly consensus gives little comfort to the evangelical scholar, because at a great many important points the history of the ancient world as reconstructed by secularists contradicts [...]

People of the Book

     James Jordan has written that the writers of the Old Testament were “highly educated priests and Levites…The Bible is not written in parole Hebrew, but in written and also hieratic Hebrew. It is written in a line by men in a line, men who were a small majority at odds with their surrounding [...]

LDS Inclusion ~ LDS Exclusion

A straightforward reading of the Book of Mormon appears to endorse eternal punishment in hell for many people. A random example of this is found in 2 Nephi 28.15:
O the wise, and the learned, and the rich, that are puffed up in the pride of their hearts, and all those who preach false doctrines, and [...]

ESV BCP Daily Lectionary

How’s that for acronyms? The English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible has a fantastic tool for performing the daily office of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). The ESV compiles the daily Bible readings: Psalms, OT, NT, Gospel – click this link. Not only that, if you use an RSS reader of some kind [...]

Catholic Inclusion ~ Catholic Exclusion

The logic of the Roman Catholic Church is that you are better off not ever hearing the gospel or knowing about the Church than you are in knowingly refusing to enter her. In other words, pagans who have not heard are better off than those who hear and do not join the Church. Current Catholic [...]

A Dying Age

As Americans, we’ve lived with the idea of our own permanence for so long that we can’t imagine a post-American world. I think that the entire 20th century was almost an American eschaton. Our way of life triumphed and seemed forever stable. How could we ever descend into anarchy when Leave it to Beaver re-runs [...]

Planting Churches in Urban Soil

At the AMiA Winter Conference, a workshop was held on “Planting Churches in Urban Soil.” It was presented by the Reverends Tommy Hinson, Mark Booker, Dan Claire and Bishop Thad Barnum.
Dan Claire started the Church of the Resurrection about six years ago on Capitol Hill. In January of 08, Resurrection launched Church of [...]

Anglican Community Project

Over on the Anglican Community Project blog (one of my many untended blogs), Prof. Steve Lake has some new posts up about his vision for an Anglican educational community. Check them out!
 
 
 

As We Forgive

Rachel and I finally sat down to watch As We Forgive this week. It’s a movie made by Laura Waters Hinson, a great Christian that we know in Washington, D.C. We’ve been waiting to watch it for a long time, but finally bought it last week. 
The movie is about reconciliation. It is a documentary about [...]

Pompey enters the Temple

A few observations from reading Plutarch’s *Lives*:
Plutarch interprets Pompey’s actions with regard to Metellus (then praetor of Crete) in terms of Achilles. Plutarch also remarks of the pirates whom Pompey cleaned out of the Mediterranean that they “…knew neither god nor law.” Plutarch is interpreting events in Rome in light of a text (The Iliad) [...]

Democracy

     Recently, President Bush said, “One of the best ways to safeguard religious freedom is to aid the rise of democracy. Democratic governments don’t all look alike. Each reflects the history and traditions of its own people. But one way — but one of the defining features of any democracy is that it makes [...]

Liberty

     Continuing my summary of A Theological Interpretation of American History, I turn to what Prof. Singer said about the Puritan conception of liberty. Singer says that to the Puritans, “Liberty was not a natural right, but a God-given right and privilege to be zealously guarded from despots, to be sure, but also subject to precise biblically-defined limits.” 
   [...]

Puritan origins

Singer begins his account of American history with a sharp focus on the Puritans. Puritans carved out a unique political and ecclesiastical culture in the Northeast, and to understand our history, you must understand their thought and practice. Singer outlines Puritan political philosophy; he writes: 
In the Puritan view of life man could no more create [...]

A Theological Interpretation of American History

There’s currently a lot of talk in conservative circles about what is wrong with the movement and how we have arrived at this fearful destination in the history of our country. It seems to me that in order to figure out where we are now, we first need to determine how we got here. One [...]

Leftist hysteria

It sure is a good thing that we survived the coup attempt by George Bush:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/a-paper-coup-and-black_b_71067.html
And that we have defeated the Brown Shirts of Bush:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0624-15.htm
Also, we didn’t get the draft renewed, because you know that was coming:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/16/politics/main649757.shtml
We also seem to have stopped that invasion of Iran that was coming:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/24/050124fa_fact
The left should be ashamed of the foolish [...]

Halloween belongs to the Church

Yes, I used to think that Halloween was some sort of devilish night where Alister Crowley and Jimmy Page looked into a Palantir and Anton Levey stayed the night at the Hotel California. Back then I knew squat about church history. We need to love the calendar of the Church and the Church Year people. [...]

There and back again

I just had the privilege of traveling to Idaho and back home again. It’s hard to believe how much a place can change in just a few years. I don’t travel by air enough to be totally jaded by the experience. I still find it amazing that we can so easily move from one side [...]

random musings regarding random musings

Some jumbled thoughts: I don’t have TBS so I can’t watch the baseball playoffs. For a sport that already has anemic ratings and is frankly boring for most of the year, moving to TBS and making itself even harder to find doesn’t make much sense to me. Is baseball going the way [...]

Calls to repentance

It seems to me that due to:
1. 9/11
2. The Iraq War
3. The desolation of New Orleans
4. Our financial collapse
There should be calls to repentance going out in every church in our land. Judging by the history of the Church, when manifold judgments like this strike us we should proclaim a fast and repent to God for our [...]