In his forthcoming Wondrous Truths, JD Trout offers an alternative account of the rise of modern science. It’s not the result of Christian views of the cosmos, nor of the dogged application of scientific method. It is the product of superior theory. And Western science has superior theory largely because of good luck: “science in selected areas of Europe rose above all other regions of the globe because it hit upon successive theories that were approximately true through an awkward... Read more
Many years ago, I critiqued traditional sacramental theology for overusing the zoom lens. Many debates and many theological formulations focus on the metaphysics of the bread and wine, and ignore other critical features of the Eucharistic event – the gathered church, eating and drinking, the specific type of food and drink, etc. The answer to “What happens in holy communion?” has often been an answer to a different question, “What happens to the elements?” Something similar is going on in... Read more
Luke 13 begins with a discussion of guilt and disasters. Pilate had slaughtered Galileans in the temple, mingling their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus denies that the Galileans who perished were greater sinners than others. Rather, “unless you repent, you shall also likewise perish.” NT Wright takes the “likewise” literally: Those who refuse to repent will end up just like the Galileans, slaughtered in the temple, sacrificed with their sacrifices. It is a direct warning about the... Read more
Know thyself, someone said. Oh, right, answered the skeptic. “Knowing ourselves – what we are like, how we came to be this way, how we might be, and too, how we should be – is extraordinarily difficult because we are such complex and confusing creatures,” writes Terrence Martin in his meditations on Erasmus, Truth and Irony. Yet we want to know. If “nothing about human existence is simple” and if “opposing claims can both be true enough, while neither is... Read more
David Gelernter claims that Trump has identified the elephant plopped on our national coffee table – political correctness. He doesn’t think the label is very descriptive, preferring to call it “invasive leftism or thought-police liberalism or metastasized progressivism.” It is, he says, “the biggest issue facing America today.” Its attitude is captured by the motto that Gelernter says is “mounted . . . above the main door at the White House, the IRS, and the DOJ: We know what’s best;... Read more
1 Chronicles begins with a list of 13 names, from Adam to Japheth. From Genesis 10, we know that the list is broken into two lists, 10 + 3. The first ten names mark generations from Adam to Noah; the list of three names are all from the same generation, the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Their descendants are listed in reverse order: A. Shem, 1:4 B. Ham, 1:4 C. Japheth, 1:4 C’. Sons of Japheth, 1:5-7 B’.... Read more
Trinitarian theology blossomed in English theology in the post-Reformation period, evidenced by the creative development of the vestigia trinitatis. During the seventeenth century, though, Trinitarian theology began to contract and wither. According to Philip Dixon (Nice and Hot Disputes), there were two dynamics at work. First, Trinitarian doctrine came under attack from various angles. Heirs of the radical Reformation used sola Scriptura as a weapon to attack Trinitarian doctrine, since it didn’t appear as such in the Bible. The Socinian... Read more
Reflecting on the lessons of Donald Trump in a piece at Public Discourse, Matthew Wright points to The Speechwriter, a recent book by Barton Swaim, former speechwriter to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Wright summarizes, “Armed with a Ph.D. in English from Edinburgh, Swaim took up speechwriting with romantic notions of wordsmithery: ‘The speechwriter, I felt, was a person whose job it was to put words in the mouths of the powerful, who understood the import and varieties of political... Read more
Marcia Pally’s Commonwealth and Covenant is a study of the “economics, politics, and theologies of relationality.” She works through these topics using the categories of “separability” and “situatedness.” Separability is “the ability to leave one’s place and develop oneself differently from past and neighbors” (3). She thinks that the contemporary West has placed too much emphasis on separability but she doesn’t think it a bad thing in itself. On the contrary: “Separability yields such indispensable things as innovation and the... Read more
Robert Taft (“Eastern Presuppositions” and Western Liturgical Reform) credits the Melkite patriarch and bishops with exercising a disproportionate influence on the direction of reform at Vatican II, due to their “remarkable imaginative and universal vision.” They were the first to state that the council should avoid definitions and condemnations, and also presented an agenda for reform that was largely adopted by the council as a whole: “liturgy in the vernacular; eucharistic concelebration and communion under both species in the Latin... Read more
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