Today I am in Troy looking at another fallen city that sparked a literature that created a culture. Troy fell to the men of Greece, became a legend, inspired Homer, and classical Greek culture was born.
Brave men fought for their city and even though they failed, their failure was more glorious than some men's successes. Thousands of years later they are still remembered, b...
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When Constantinople was all that was left of the Byzantine Empire, a kingdom and people that had survived great challenges for a millennium seemed about to fall to its greatest foe. It needed allies and it needed them badly. The Emperor looked to the West, but disunion between the Eastern and Western churches was a difficulty.
The Council of Florence (@1439) appeared to sol...
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The great City is a Turkish city . . . for centuries the seat of a massive Empire.
The Ottoman Empire was one of the most successful in human history. To the very end it preserved peace in regions where peace has been hard to find. One of the most important things I have learned this semester is the glory of that great state in reading and now in a visit.
Growing up the ...
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Today begins a trip with forty Torrey students to Istanbul, the coast of Turkey, the islands of the Aegean, parts of Greece, and Athens. Over the next twenty days, I hope to share some thoughts about where we are going and what I hope
Istanbul (the City) is a place that looms in my imagination. As a child the fall of Constantinople was a story, like Atlantis, that seemed mo...
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A few years ago I was invited to engage in a public debate on the Trinity with an anti-trinitarian teacher named Anthony Buzzard. Professor Buzzard teaches that Jesus was nothing more than a human uniquely used by God. His theology is basically Socinian, and he teaches at Atlanta Bible College, which is not your average Bible College, but an anti-trinitarian school from a den...
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At some point in pop culture it became difficult to support the War. You can insinuate that Bush stole an election, hint at 9/11 conspiracy theories, or that our troops are morally equivalent to the terrorists and be taken seriously, but not that the War is a good thing. Even Donald Trump (!) has weighed in against the War.
It is now common television-wisdom that everyone ...
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You might want to study this one for a minute before I offer my interpretation of the drawing by a six year old.
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Done?
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Okay. It's an American flag wearing a mortarboard, dancing and waving its hands. Its fingers are like bombs bursting in air, and its tassel is having a party of its own. The flagpole has been fattened to serve as a body, of which the flag is head. ...
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This is a prayer for the 2007 graduates of the Torrey Honors Institute, spoken at the commencement ceremony on May 25, 2007.
Our Father in Heaven, we bring before you today these graduates of the Torrey Honors Institute. They have spent four years with us, talking and talking and talking. They have talked in seminar rooms and in hallways, in dorms and cafeterias, in apartm...
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Forget the Commencement Address . . . which is like telling you to forget Harry Reid. There are ten things I wished I had known on graduating from college. These are not the most important things, just the things nobody told me that would have been useful. Some I stumbled on myself, others I learned by making mistakes.
In no particular order:
1. Friends matter. Don't mov...
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I sometimes have students who have been taught in church that when Paul uses the image of “headship” in the New Testament he must mean some concept other than “authority.” These students have heard from their pastor that “head” never means “authority” in literature prior to the New Testament. Instead, it means something like “source.” The idea of “authorit...
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In the past two days, I have been writing about the evils done in the name of an ideology that asserts there is no spiritual realm, that this is known to be true, and has total disdain for anyone who disagrees. This type of secularism is a bad thing.
I haven't been misunderstood yet (so far as I know), so let me make sure that I am not with a clarification.
There are tw...
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Bottom Line:
Soon the media is going to tell you, traditional Christian, that you are voting for Romney because you are too stupid not to do so . . . just as one month ago they were implying that you were too big of a bigot to vote for Romney.
The Old Story:
The major media has spent months talking about how traditional Christians (but not of course them!) will not ...
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