Do you feel like you’re alone, Will? For many of us, the news of Robin Williams’ suicide was so jarring at least partly because Williams was so good at what he did. We believed in his character. We looked at Williams and saw a zany, irreverent, wickedly funny and suprisingly rangy actor who surely lived inside his own personal laugh track. That’s not to say the public was ignorant of Williams’ addictions and struggles; it’s just that, as with so many... Read more
Twenty years have passed since Michael Novak delivered his Templeton Prize address, “Awakening From Nihilism.” It is, in my humble estimation, one of the best and most insightful analyses about modernity’s standoff with God, truth, and freedom. Though “Awakening From Nihilism” is most concerned with learning the lessons from the past–specifically, the tyranny and bloodshed of the 20th century–it also carries stunningly prescient observations about the complex yet intimate relationship that freedom and human flourishing have with theism and theistic moral... Read more
I want to offer a couple of points of clarification on my post “Calvinism’s Bully Problem,” and then say something about the direction I want to go with this blog. 1) I don’t believe that Calvinistic theology is inherently cruel. That’s an important point because there have been and are currently many evangelicals who say otherwise. It’s true that a Reformed interpretation of issues like election and grace do not always lead to places of intellectual and spiritual ease. But... Read more
When I say I’m a Calvinist, what I mean is that my views on divine sovereignty, predestination and grace line up well with the tradition of “Reformed” theology and churches. I understand debatable texts (such as Romans 9) to mean that God is His own counselor when it comes to the salvation of sinners. He is neither compelled by goodness in us or knowledge of what we will eventually choose. His election is sovereign, free and merciful. This is a... Read more
I suppose I was holding out hope that Ann Coulter’s idiotic diatribe on soccer was merely a provocateur’s desperate cry for clicks. I didn’t want to entertain the idea that Coulter, an unfortunate representative of conservatism to many of Fox News’s less informed viewers, was genuine in her asinine logic, fallacious analogies and downright trollery. I was wrong. Coulter has bottomed out as a sentient being, as evidenced by this piece which is offensive to the sensibilities of all Christians... Read more
Friend: “So where do you go to school?” Me: “I’m homeschooled.” Friend: “Oh man, you’re so lucky!” If I had a dollar for every time that conversation happened growing up…well, let’s just say I’d have a much nicer website. I was homeschooled PreK-12. Except for a brief conversation before high school, neither my parents nor I ever seriously considered anything else. When I enrolled as a freshman in college it was the first time I’d ever had to leave my... Read more
Anyone who spends just a reasonable amount of time online knows that internet comment boards tend to be the roughest neighborhoods of cyberspace. A toxic combination of anonymity, inflated sense of intellect and outrage culture results in so many of our public online forums being intolerably cruel and ignorant. What has discouraged me lately is that this trend seems to apply just as well to Christian sites and forums. Two recent news stories within the Christian blogosphere speak to this... Read more
In airplane movies, there’s only so much that can happen to everyone. The traditional threats seem to be a hijacker, an epidemic, a bomb, or the supernatural (OK, fine, throw in snakes too). The screenwriter’s job is to open up the drama on the plane gradually so as to tell a three act story with what amounts to two major characters: The airplane and the passengers. The ultimate goal is to keep the audience engrossed in this totally enclosed world.... Read more
I’m grateful for Alan Noble and his articulate writing, which is currently giving a voice to evangelicals like me in places like The Atlantic. His latest contribution is best seen as a companion piece to what he wrote a couple of weeks ago about evangelical morality and American culture. In that article, Noble wondered aloud whether the tide of culture was pushing traditional Christians farther out to sea. In light of these issues, there’s a kind of existential fear motivating... Read more
John Loftus has added his voice to the New Atheist choir that is chortling for academies to dismiss philosophy of religion from their academic disciplines. I initially wanted to write a thorough response to the argument, but that might be better left to a greater mind than mine (not hard to find). I want to focus instead on one point in Loftus’s argument: His allegation that philosophy of religion as a discipline dates only as far back as pre-WWII. Firstly,... Read more
Samuel D. James
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