Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness , by Richard Thaler and Cass Sustein is about choice architecture: “A choice architect has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions . . . . If you design the ballot voters use to choose candidates, you are a choice architect. If you are a doctor and must describe the alternative treatments available to a patient, you are a choice architect. If you design the form that new... Read more
PROVERBS 28:20 This proverb, like many, is structured in parallel: The man of faithfulnesses is great with blessings But the one haste to be rich shall not be pure. The contrasts are revealing. Faithfulness is contrasted not with obvious terms like “disobedient” or “rebellious” or “unfaithful,” but with “hastiness.” The verb ( ‘utz ) can refer to pressure coming from another, as when the Egyptian taskmasters “hasted” the Hebrews to get their work done (Exodus 5:13). Here, it refers instead... Read more
A week ago, the First Things web site published a piece of mine on global warming. See it here: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/02/climate-of-skepticism Read more
PROVERBS 28:17 The Proverb can be translated this, woodenly, in this way: “A man oppresses with the blood of the soul unto the pit he flees. Let no man hold him back.” Again, the proverb uses the word adam , and again we are put in mind of the sin of the first man. Adam’s sin was an act of impatience and rebellion against Yahweh’s commandment, but here the “adam” is acting violently, shedding innocent blood. Was the first man’s... Read more
As soon as Matthew mentions Judas as the one who will “betray” or “hand over” ( paradidomi ) Jesus (10:4), he records a fair bit about handing over and betrayal. Often, Jesus warns that the disciples will be handed over (10:17, 19, 21; 24:9-10), but after chapter 17, the one “handed over” is often Jesus Himself (17:22l 20:18-19). In chapter 26-27, Matthew uses the verb twelve times, sometimes to describe what Judas does in betraying Jesus, sometimes to describe what... Read more
Novels arise with secularism. Citing Lukacs, Rowan William says that novels appear “when it is no longer possible to plot the significance of human lives against the unquestioned backdrop of what is agreed to be the one universal narrative,” which leads writers “to create ordered narratives for individual imagined lives.” Dostoevsky radicalizes the secularity of the novel by dissolving “the tidy endings and the unitary personalities that were once the currencey of the novel.” But Dostoevsky’s radical attack on tidy... Read more
In his discussion of The Idiot , Rowan Williams makes this profound psychological and pastoral observation: “To see the truth in someone is not only to penetrate behind appearances to some hidden static reality. It also has to be, if it is not to be destructive, a grasp of the processes and motors of concealment, a listening to the specific language of a person hiding himself. It is perhaps the difference between ‘seeing through’ someone and understanding him.” Read more
Amazon says they’ve got my Jane Austen biography in stock. Click the icon to the right and you’ll get there. New St Andrews College philosopher Mitch Stokes has a biography of Isaac Newton (Christian Encounters Series) in the same series from Nelson, and it’s in stock at Amazon too. Check it out. Read more
In his excellent Theopolitical Imagination , William Cavanaugh points out that during the Reformation Catholic princes remained Catholic in those areas where the power of the Papacy had already been restricted. Because the princes could have their way, they didn’t need to change religions: “In France the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges had accomplished this in 1438, eliminating papal collection of the Annate tax, taking away the Pope’s right to nominate candidates for vacant sees, and giving the crown the formerly... Read more
Paul instructs the Corinthians to defer to weaker brothers, avoiding, for example, meat sacrificed to idols out of concern for a weaker brother’s conscience. But what happens when we apply a universality principle: What if everybody did? Wouldn’t that mean that the weak end up running the church? Paul, it appears, doesn’t seem to be bothered by the possibility. That’s partly because he has confidence in the Spirit. But it also appears to be part of his program: The inferior... Read more
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