Disagreeing well

January 21, 2025 By Coyle Neal

Continuing the not-necessarily-for-everyone exercise of reading through the Schaff set of Church Fathers (if my count is right, I should be done with this in only one more decade, give or take). My latest conquest here is Volume 3 of Series 2, containing the writings of Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius, and Rufinus (mostly Theodoret, Rufinius, and Jerome). Frankly, it was excellent. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It had all the challenges of reading the 19th century translations of the church fathers.... Read more

The Future of Media 1: Microbudgets

January 17, 2025 By Coyle Neal

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As the media landscape changes, one thing that is already underway is the rise of the microbudget films. No, I don’t mean the ones that are funded on Indiegogo or Patreon or whatever (though those certainly exist as well, and are filling up platforms like Tubi). I mean bigger budget than the $30,000 raises through crowdsourcing, but far, far under the $100 million range small-scale blockbusters put to work. Specifically, we should expect to see the return of the $10-$50... Read more

The future of media?

January 10, 2025 By Coyle Neal

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The landscape of film–both television and the movies–has been changing in the past twenty years. More and more money has been poured into shows and movies by production companies. This saw impressive results for a while (think of the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe–at least until Endgame hit the theaters), but has more and more often resulted in diminishing returns or even outright losses in the past five years. Consider as just one example the film Chaos Walking, which you almost... Read more

Best of 2024

December 24, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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It’s been a quiet few months at Schaeffer’s Ghost thanks to some chaos IRL (mostly not mine, thankfully). This will continue for a bit longer, and then Lord willing we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled reviewing. But in the spirit of Christmas past, I wanted to offer a list of the best of 2024, As in the past, these are the best books I read. Not the best books anyone could have read, or the best books that were published.... Read more

Repost of “Hillbilly Elegy” review

July 19, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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With the nomination of J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate, I thought it worthwhile to repost a conversation about Vance’s excellent book Hillbilly Elegy held seven years ago on the City of Man podcast. The conversation starts about seven minutes in (after an announcement for a conference that happened seven years ago, which if I were less lazy I’d go back and clip out, and introductions of other podcasts, most of which are now defunct). Available in the player below, here, or... Read more

Two more from 9Marks

July 12, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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9Marks has been slowly releasing a series of pamphlets in the “Church Questions” series. Each short book aims to answer in a few pages key questions about the life and theology of the church. The two I received for review are both short enough that I’m going to cover them together in one review rather than posting two reviews, each of which would run the risk of being longer than the text in question… The first is How Can I Grow... Read more

The end of the world

July 5, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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Does God judge the earth? What does that judgment look like? Is it a fleeting-but-still-terrible thing? Or long-running-but-not-so-bad (the proverbial drinking beer with friends in hell)? Thomas Schreiner has tackled these and other questions in his new short book The Justice & Goodness of God: A Biblical Case for the Final Judgement. In just over a hundred pages, Schreiner walks us through what the Bible has to say about the final judgment and how it squares with God’s good character. This... Read more

You can go home again

June 28, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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Have you ever read the parable of the prodigal son and thought “they should rewrite this for kids.” For kids, yes, but that’s been done. Charlie and the Preschool Prodigal by Ginger Blomberg is the telling of the tale about the brothers of the tale as children. The plot is pretty straightforward (and I won’t spoil much of it here, though can one really spoil a children’s book based on a story everyone knows?). Eddie is the mess/wild kid, Charlie is the clean/orderly... Read more

Using your mind for science

June 21, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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Christianity and the sciences have fallen on hard times in the last century and a quarter or so. Gone are the days when Henry Drummond openly celebrated the theory of evolution as the Theistic alternative to Spontaneous generation, or Cotton Mather rejoiced in Isaac Newton as the great expounder of God’s governance of the universe. And yet, Christians are still obligated to explore and participate in the sciences. That such has fallen on hard times is no excuse. To help us do... Read more

Restoring our Confidence

June 14, 2024 By Coyle Neal

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How should Christians live in the modern world? This is of course not a new question–God’s people have been asking that for as long as He has been calling us out from the world to live as His chosen people. And while Christians have always debated the best way to answer that question, the modern era is somewhat unique in failing to search the past for wisdom in answering this question. Carl Trueman wants to set us right on this... Read more