Get Truth Where You Can Get truth where you can. Some useful ideas comes to Christians from non-Christian sources and this is the least surprising fact that surprises critics of Christianity. “Ha! That’s an idea you got from . . . “ is said as if that is a bad thing. If you love wisdom, believe all people are created in the image of God, receive a common grace from God, as Christians do, then you are never surprised when... Read more
There is a species of literary juvenalia that goes looking for contradictions in great books or writers. Teach a semester on Plato and some youngling will discover that “soul” in Phaedo is used in a contradictory way with soul in Timaeus. “Look,” runs the paper that writes itself, “a contradiction in Plato!” Maybe, but usually not. The student reads, but badly. This is most excellent as it allows the Professor to show that (just perhaps) the student has not discovered an... Read more
The truth is out there, but knowing the truth requires work. That is the delightful labor that God has given people. Even when it comes to the unchanging realm of ideas, numbers, and the Divine we only seem dimly. The shadows of reality, the marvelous material world, are much harder to capture, because they are always changing. Platonism in conjunction with Christianity helped produce and sustain the Scientific Revolution. Platonism made mathematics and mathematical modeling central to scientific inquiry over... Read more
Traditions, especially weird traditions, and college programs go together. I have been told there is an Oxford college that commemorates a duck every one hundred years. I shall not check in case this is not true. Perhaps the strangest tradition in the college program at The Saint Constantine School is the ability, once a year, for any student to throw a pie at professors and then at the President. (Tip: the tin plate hurts more than the whipped cream, though... Read more
No grandchildren yet, and my children are grownups now, yet I have always loved picture books and board books. The illustrations and the simple wording in the best children’s books can teach adults if we spend time with them. Try it. Stop. Look at the pictures. Consider the words in the light of the picture on the page and think as a little child. This is not a call to childishness. I am fifty-five, not a child. Yet there is... Read more
Good Advice from a Good Professor Don’t reject an argument nobody is making. This good advice came from a professor who was explaining that what I thought was a problem in an argument was indeed a problem, but sadly for me this was not an argument anyone relevant to our discussion was making. I had misunderstood what was being said. Clarity ensued and my learning continued! Over time the same professor helped me with a second bit of advice, argue... Read more
“It’s bad luck to be you,” so said a video game on the game death of yet another “chosen one.” You know the type. He is a farm boy and is approached by a princess with a chance to save the day and win gold and the girl. You cannot shoot him, the guards always miss, he wins, because he is “the chosen one.” Luke cannot be killed by Storm Troopers. Frodo is invisible to the orcs. The video game... Read more
Beat the bad guys and the History Channel will end up talking more about the bad guys than the good guys. Ike may be likable, but he is not Hitler and evidently the Nazis draw viewers more than the Allies. Our Ike is a decent man, no saint, but no blood and soil genocidal maniac. His vices were common, his virtues uncommon. He was a winner, but lacked flair, wearing his uniform uncomfortably and garbling his words. He could not... Read more
I am (on occasion) asked about design and ideas surrounding design. Some questions are in areas where I have no relevant training and so only a lay understanding of the issues. Fortunately, I can point to friends who help me understand the ideas around design inferences. The following is a guest post by Dr. Eric Holloway. Dr. Eric Holloway received a solid grounding in classical education at the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. Eric continued schooling to complete a... Read more
A story like Atlantis is not historical, more like the Lord of the Rings than the Gospel of John or Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars. Instead, stories like Atlantis fill in the history we have lost in deep time*. Socrates wants to see the ideal in motion, but history will never give us the ideal. We are broken. History, as the Bible shows, gives us flawed King David. Yet still humankind needs tales, like that of Arthur, to fill the... Read more
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