“I never knew a crooked road could look so straight.” –Robert Taylor, “The Bribe” Read more

TAKE #4: NO, BUT TAKE #5: POSTING SUCCESS AT LAST!!! I don’t think this is permanent though…! Anyway, events have taken a turn for the annoying, and so I will not be posting substantive stuff until tomorrow or possibly Friday. However, I have a bunch of fun stuff saved up for you (everything from vouchers to beauty), and I’ve also got a big, fat mailbag full of emails to which I will reply. For now: Blogadder on his experiences stamping... Read more

If I write a random post, like this one, and publish it, do you think Blogger will let me publish the more exciting and fun post below it? Let’s find out! Take #1: Nope! Take #2: Nope! Take #3: Nyet! Read more

That’s great, it starts with a wedding cake, birds and bees and birthrates. Baudelaire is still clichéd. I want a hydroplane, listen to the Adverts, Roark serves his own needs but doesn’t know his own needs. Welcome back to Oxblog, grunt, no, strength, China starts to shatter with fear fight down spite. Patsy Cline’s on fire, is the government for hire, in a downed website–where’s my archives? Coming in a hurry with the furies blogging down my neck. NYT reporters... Read more

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. So there’s a vast, several-posts-long thing about pacifism right below this post. But I also want to ask a non-pacifism-related question: The “sexual revolution” is often justified on the grounds that now we can have sex for fun. I make no claims about male sexuality or psyche, but as far as women are concerned, this doesn’t seem to be how things have worked out. I think it’s a useful exercise for everyone, male or... Read more

IN LOVE AND WAR: The sequel to this post. First, some caveats: 1) Professor Work is, as his title might indicate, a professor (and a rigorous, discerning, and thoughtful writer). I’m a journalist (at best). He’s probably forgotten more about this stuff than I’ll ever know. 2) I misspoke in that previous post. Pacifism and celibacy, although I do think the parallel between the two is illuminating in a lot of ways, don’t “actually hold strikingly similar positions in the... Read more

Second–these are doubtless not all the passages that could be cited, but I think they make a representative sample: Matt. 26:51-2, “And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Luke 22:36-8, “Then said... Read more

Now, back to Scripture. Professor Work cites Gal. 5:22-3, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” He says, “While I have heard many Christians defend Christian violence, I do not remember hearing anyone explain how the specific spiritual gifts distributed in the Church are being properly used when Christians take up the sword of civil authority.” I note with interest that justice is not named... Read more

Finally, there’s the fact that both Christ and his disciples have the opportunity to tell Roman soldiers who believe in Christ to leave their positions. Neither the centurion in Matt. 8, nor the one in Acts 10, are told, as far as we know, that their soldiering is incompatible with Christian life. Nobody brings it up. This is pretty different from what happens with the woman taken in adultery (“Go and sin no more”) or the rich young man who... Read more

“EUNUCHS FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN”: I thought of the parallel between pacifism and celibacy for a number of reasons. First, they are somewhat parallel within the Catholic tradition. Aquinas discusses his reasons for believing that the clergy should not bear arms. Second, both pacifism and celibacy are extraordinary ways of giving oneself solely to God, and serving as an eschatological sign of the eternal life in which there is no marriage or giving in marriage, and (pace Milton!) no... Read more