That is the title of my recent entry over at The Catholic Thing. It is adapted from a portion of a paper I delivered on May 17, 2011 at Princeton University as part of panel celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Hadley Arkes’ First Things: An Inquiry Into the First Principles of Morals and Justice (PrincetonUniversity Press, 1986). Here’s how it begins: Most books and articles in political and legal philosophy are dry. One rarely finds in them humorous anecdotes,... Read more
Today, May 25, 2011, my father, Harold J. Beckwith, turns 81! To the right is a picture of my Dad, me, and my brother Jim in front of our Mercedes Benz with Caesar’s Palace in the background. We were at Caesar’s having lunch following my First Holy Communion in May 1968. At the bottom left is a picture of me, my wife, Frankie, and my parents last November in Las Vegas. Here is what I say about my father in Return... Read more
From the Baylor website: Another 2,000 graduates joined the ever-growing family of Baylor alumni over the weekend, as the Class of 2011 received their diplomas during commencement ceremonies at the Ferrell Center. (Click here for a slideshow of the weekend.) Among the graduates was Allyson Ray, a name that just might ring a bell way back in the memory of some Central Texans. Ray made headlines back in 1989 when she became the smallest baby in Texas ever to survive;... Read more
A hearty Patheos welcome to my Baylor colleague, Roger Olson. Roger is a professor of theology in Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary. You can find his new Patheos blog here. His blog is called: Roger Olson, My evangelical Arminian theological musings. Read more
That is the title of an article that will be published in tomorrow’s New York Times (14 March 2011). Authored by Mark Oppenheimer, here’s how it begins: According to one cynical view, academic disputes are so vicious only because the stakes are so low. Yet as the editors of Synthese, a leading philosophy journal, can tell you, what they publish matters: in debates over Christianity, the teaching of evolution, and American politics. This story began in March 2009, when a... Read more
That’s the title of my latest column over at The Catholic Thing. Here’s how it begins: N. T. Wright, former Anglican Bishop of Durham, is one of the foremost theologians and biblical scholars in the world. Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews, his work on the doctrine of justification, controversial among Evangelical Protestants, is in many ways remarkably close to the Catholic view. For this reason, Professor Wright’s work, much to his chagrin,... Read more
Next week I will be at Princeton University participating in what promises to be an outstanding conference: Law, Liberty and Virtue (May 16-17, 2011). I will present a paper as part of the panel on Tuesday afternoon (May 17), “Revisiting Hadley Arkes’s First Things on its 25th Anniversary.” The other panel members include Hadley P. Arkes (Amherst College), Diana J. Schaub (Loyola University Maryland), Michael Uhlmann (Claremont Graduate University) and Robert P. George (Princeton University). If you are in the area, please come join... Read more
(HT: Bill Glennen) From the LA Times: On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. “Suddenly... Read more
Consider the rare political conspiracy theorist known as the truther-birther. He not only believes the wrong guy, bin Laden, was killed, but that the wrong guy, President Obama, ordered the killing. And now we can add to this conspiracy theory stew the newly-minted, “deather,” who doesn’t believe bin Laden was really killed. Thus, you can in theory have someone who believes that the wrong guy issued an order to kill a guy that didn’t die for a crime he did... Read more
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