One of the first impressions one gets from the background chapter is just how highly poetry was prized in antiquity, and how often it was the first thing that the young learned some of as part of their education, well before they read history, and long long before they read philosophy. This of course differs dramatically from most modern Western education, all too concerned with left brained studies and functions. For example, just for fun I recently took a much... Read more

One of the most helpful classics studies that I have read recently is Tessa Morgan’s erudite study of ancient education (384 pages, paperback reprint in 2007). I’ve seldom read a doctoral thesis this learned and skilled in its execution. It comes out of her doctoral work at Cambridge, which has one of the finest classics departments in the whole world, and it is simply loaded with useful primary source material and analysis of various sorts, particularly of the educational papyri... Read more

Without question, Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren are superb actors and its nice to see them together for the first time in this film. If you want to see what good acting looks like— here’s an example. But the odd thing about this film is that it is good actors who are pretending to be good pretenders— whereas, nothing is as it seems, and the film proves to be a tissue of lies and deceptions…. and revenge in the bargain.... Read more

BEN: Rightly you stress that the resurrection of Jesus involves a real embodied existence, only one that is apparently immune to disease, decay, and death now. And correctly you stress that ‘dying and going to heaven’ as a form of afterlife is barely mentioned in the NT compared to the stress on new creation, new creatures raised from the dead. After 2,000 years of waiting for the return of Christ, it is perhaps no surprise that the emphasis shifted from... Read more

BEN: In the later part of the book you suggest that not merely Jesus’ words, but perhaps especially his crucifixion has something to contribute to the discussion of natural theology, perhaps not least because it reveals most clearly how God is involved in human history. Unpack this for our readers. Perhaps say something as well about how the resurrection of Jesus contributes to the discussion of natural theology. TOM: The argument of chapter 7 is that there are many ‘signposts’... Read more

BEN: Missing from your good discussion is much interaction with one of the pet texts used to talk about natural theology, namely Rom. 1.18-32. It appears to tell us that the reality of the real Biblical God and his power is evident in all of creation, and so there is no one who has no knowledge of the real God. Rather what has happened is ‘they have exchanged the truth of God for a lie’. Now one cannot exchange something... Read more

BEN: One of the recurrent themes I picked up in this new book is the stress on God’s continued and constant involvement in his creation and in human history for that matter, especially in the history of His people, but with a very cautionary word about trying to read off ‘God’s will’ much less God’s judgments from natural disasters like the Lisbon earthquake. The Bible is surely no advocate of a Deistic or watchmaker deity that merely observes the world,... Read more

America’s love affair with American made cars shifted into another gear when the Ford Mustang, Cobra, GT, and the Chevy Corvette came to the fore in the 60s. This particular movie is in part about that, but more than anything it’s about Henry Ford Jrs’ desire to beat Ferrari in various big races, particularly the 24 Hours of LeMan. This movie focuses on the true story of Carroll Shelby a car designer, and former LeMan racer himself, and his friend... Read more

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BEN: In regard to history itself, you talk a lot about critical realism as opposed to either radical subjectivity or assumed positivistic objectivity when it comes to the human analysis of data. How does critical realism differ from, say Derrida or reader-response theories of Fish and others? Is there really nothing but texts, and is it really true that meaning is entirely in the eye of the beholder, or merely created in the interaction between the ‘reader’ and his source... Read more