At least since Kant, debates about knowledge have been framed in terms of objective v. subjective: Do we have actual and certain access to things that are outside our brain (objective), or does our mind determine what we know (subjective)? Is truth absolute and objective, or relative and subjective? Christians are inclined to defend the objectivity of the world and of our knowledge of it. On the other hand: Does it make any sense to talk about my knowledge in... Read more
In various places, James Jordan makes the point that the death penalty depends on a theological view of law and punishment. This is true in the sense that human rulers can kill only if the Lord of life and death has delegated His authority. Christians who defend the death penalty believe that He has done just this. But the death penalty depends on theology in another way too. If God is not judge, then a human court that imposes the... Read more
Keeping people wandering in extended adolescence is good for business, says Thomas Bergler in The Juvenilization of American Christianity (6-7): “People who know who they are, who think carefully about purchases, and who exercise self-control are harder to persuade to buy products they don’t really need. In contrast, impulsive people who are searching for a sense of identity, who are looking to salve their emotional pain, who desperately crave the approval of others, and who have lots of discretionary income... Read more
Every time it surges, Islam surges explosively. When it gets going, it makes the globe wobble. Robert Wilken ( The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity ) writes that nothing during the first millennium of Christianity rivaled the rise of Islam; it was as an “unexpected, calamitous, and consequential” outbreak (288). Within a century, Islam had gobbled up most of the Christian world of the Middle East and North Africa: “in the span of less than a hundred... Read more
Before he converted, Boris, khan of the Bulgars, peppered Pope Nicholas with questions about how conversion would affect Bulgar life. Among other things, Boris asked about the custom by which the Bulgar king ate by himself on his throne while everyone else, including the royal family, ate at a distance. Nicholas answered that, though it violates “good behavior,” the custom “is not against the faith,”and therefore he offered no “command” but only “persuasion.” But he went on to urge Boris... Read more
The Abraham narrative of Genesis begins with a promise of land and descendants like the sand and stars. It ends with a down payment on the promise. Abraham sojourns in the land, but after Sarah dies he negotiates the purchase of a burial site (Genesis 23). It is the only piece of property he owns in the land that is promised to his seed. Then he remarries, and his second wife Keturah bears him six suns (25:1-2). It is a... Read more
“The Federal Reserve is not your friend,” writes Judy Shelton in The Weekly Standard . Its policies encourage “unjustified risks in pursuit of monetary gain,” give incentives for “speculative conniving instead of virtuous endeavor,” offers reasons to borrow beyond our means to repay. Friends don’t do that to friends. The heart of the problem is the freedom that the Fed has to create money, which foments “a destabilizing fissure between the real economy and the precarious world of high finance.”... Read more
In his The Law and The Elementa of The World An Exegetical Study In Aspects of Pauls Teaching (1964), AJ Bandstra helpfully describes the Greek term stoicheion / stoicheia as a “formal” term. By that he means that it has “by itself no specific content” but “receives its ‘specific content’ from the context in which it is used” (33). The English “element” has a similarly formal character, referring to the constituents of the physical world, the bread and wine of... Read more
In the midst of a sharp political critique of the American South of today, Garry Wills has some sharp observations on the contribution of the South, especially its literature, to America: “A sense of the past helps explain why America’s southern writers were to the rest of America, in the twentieth century, what Irish writers were to England. The English had Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Sean O’Casey, Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. We (whose relevant region is... Read more
John Gray ( Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals , 19) argues that “Among us, science serves two needs: for hope and censorship.” It feeds hope because science is the only institution where progress is evident: “The political projects of the twentieth century have failed, or achieved much less than they promised. At the same time, progress in science is a daily experience, confirmed whenever we buy a new electronic gadget, or take a new drug. Science gives... Read more
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