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 [...]

Calvin and Cheney

My friend Rick from Endued sent me an article from Christianity Today that addressed the unitary executive theory advanced by Dick Cheney and others in the Bush Administration, and tried to put it in the perspective of Calvin’s political theory.  Here’s how the author, David Neff, defined the unitary theory:
But one young staffer in the [...]

The marriage of Christianity and republican political theory in America

Noll’s fifth chapter analyzes the American combination of Christianity and republican political ideas, which was a rare combination in the 18th and 19th centuries.  You can see my notes on his previous chapter, where he explained more about this, here.
Noll argues that the most powerful influence in combining Christian beliefs and republican political principles was [...]

The Roots of American Theology

I’ve finally gotten a chance to begin, for at least the second time, Mark Noll’s America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln.  He’s set out an interesting task for himself: answering the question of how theological ideas in America became so thoroughly integrated with American cultural ideas.  Specifically, he is exploring how evangelical religious [...]

The everlasting Christmas celebration…

Every year the holidays come and go.  I, for one, don’t let go so fast.  I have always loved Christmas and all it represents, though as a child, I didn’t know all it represented but I knew I was missing something.   When I became a christian, it became all the more clearer why I loved [...]

My Sanctity of Life Sermon Notes from 1/18/09 “Rescuing Lives by Exposing Darkness and Loving Jesus”

These notes were intended for me to preach off of and may not be formatted all that well for your reading, but I am posting them nonetheless. Included are segments from MLK’s Letter from Birmingham and several other articles.
“Rescuing Lives by Exposing Darkness and Loving Jesus”
Proverbs 24:10-12 (ESV)
10 If you faint in the day of [...]

Academic Freedom Day Coming Feb. 12 2009

 Support Academic Freedom on Feb. 12 and all days!!! Click on picture for link.
You can protest, write a letter to your local newspaper editorial section, call in on talk radio, write the local school board, etc.

What happened to “Ask NOT what your country can do for you but what YOU can do for your country”?

What happened to American Patriotism and the gratitude of freedom, which is not really ‘free’ indeed.  This freedom we have come to know and feed on has been at a great cost, of American lives & much sacrifice, that is.
I’m not a native born American.  My family came here from Asia, legally.  We went through the [...]

Apologies to the Obama’s “potential” grandchildren

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Obama,
I want to express to you that my child is NOT a “punishment” to me.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNzmly28Bmg
Let me give you a little background, if I may.  In my junior year in high school, I made a mistake.  The mistake was having premarital sex.  Well, as a result (or consequence of doing something I [...]

Mr. Obama, “Why is reducing the number of abortions a good thing?”

Senator Barack Obama stated at the Saddleback Forum that he would work to reduce the number of abortions. I was hoping that Pastor Rick Warren would follow up by asking a question I have long wanted interviewers to ask, “Why is reducing the number of abortions a good thing?”. I admit that it is a [...]

Review of Peter Hawkins’ Beecher Lecture on Dante’s Purgatory by Dan Meyer

by guest blogger Dan Meyer.
Just finished watching and listening to Peter Hawkins’ second Beecher lecture on Dante’s Purgatory, introduced, by the way, by Barbara Brown Taylor, a former Beecher lecturer herself. (The lectures can be seen on the Internet, as can several other series.) Hawkins acknowledged that some of the 18th and 19th century Connecticut [...]

Guest Blogger Dan Meyer Writes on Antony Flew and Problem of Evil

Antony Flew
There are two articles in the NY Times this morning that make me sick. They are both about Antony Flew (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04Flew-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin), the famous British philosopher who seems to have moved from atheism (he wrote a very influential book on the subject many years ago) to a belief in the Aristotelian god, a prime mover, [...]