Some temptations are to eat chocolate during Lent: bad but not sinful. Other siren calls are to mock small kittens which is always wicked and where even the thought should lead to immediate pastoral help. But there are a few temptations that are merely calls to amusement that will, almost certainly lead to your embarrassment, but also potentially to your intellectual growth.
...
Read More...
It's hard to account for just how much influence continues to stream from that little group of writers called the Inklings. Never mind that the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have survived into the twenty-first century in the unlikely form of Hollywood blockbusters trailing cash and merchandise as far as the eye can see. The most influential of the Inklings were Lewis...
Read More...
Charles Williams was a close friend of C.S. Lewis and in the words of my esteemed colleague (and close friend) Fred Sanders "preternaturally eerie." My goal is eventually to become the preternaturally eerie friend of Fred Sanders so here is my personal list of the essential Charles Williams.
Charles Williams is an uneven writer. Often he is nearly great and other times he is...
Read More...
The Christian Century, that venerable old journal of what Christianity looks like from the mainline denominations, asked C. S. Lewis in 1962 for a top ten list of books that had exerted a formative influence on him. I'm currently re-reading Wordsworth's Prelude, and had a vague memory that it was on Lewis' list. So I looked up the list, and here it is.
1. George MacDon...
Read More...
Sadly, when Senator Obama loses his race for president, many will blame racism, but this is too facile. He is losing it now in polls and his race does not explain why. While some bigots are rejecting him due to race, many others are sadly turning from him as the nature of his candidacy, the Senator's actual politics, is made plain to them.
Of course, in a Democrat year, he s...
Read More...
Let me repeat what I have often said: if the Democrat Party cannot win this November, it will implode. They should win, and still have to be considered the heavy favorites, but if they fight all summer (no nominee until the Convention), they just might lose.
Polling is bad right now for Democrats when it should be at its nadir for the incumbent party, the Republicans.
At ...
Read More...
One interesting sign of intelligent life in American colleges is the proliferation of academic conferences by, of, and for undergraduates. These undergrad conferences, where college students present arguments and research to each other, are popping up in more and more disciplines these days.
Biola University's student government, Associated Students, is calling for papers...
Read More...
I've been describing "confession of sins" to my kids as agreeing with God about sin. Etymologically, that's correct: greek homo (same) + logeo (say) = to say the same thing. Sometimes, of course, we just don't want to say the same thing about sin as God does. He's entitled to his opinions, of course, but we'd like to retain the right to describe our actions in more positive ...
Read More...
Death, and darkness get you packing,
Nothing now to man is lacking,
All your triumphs now are ended,
And what Adam marr'd, is mended;
Graves are beds now for the weary,
Death a nap, to wake more merry;
Youth now, full of pious duty,
Seeks in thee for perfect beauty,
The weak, and aged tir'd, with length
Of daies, from thee look for new strength,
And Infants with thy...
Read More...
About ten years ago, the GREATEST AND MOST OVERLOOKED LIVING SINGER-SONGWRITER Terry Scott Taylor released a CD entitled John Wayne. The whole CD was great, marking Terry Taylor's umpteenth self-reinvention --this time as a kind of regionalist spiritual pundit, an alterna-pop Flannery O'Connor from Orange County. But a standout song that's been on my mind this Easter season ...
Read More...
This is a little drawing (about six inches square) given to me by Verna Smith, an artist who works in hand-made paper. She must have made it around 1975, but gave it to me thirty years later. Photos don't quite capture the delicacy and suggestiveness of the paper: we're so used to thinking of paper as a neutral ground that we find it hard to pay attention to it when, as in t...
Read More...
Here is a great idea for a conference: The Holy Trinity in Holy Scripture. It will be held May 28-30 at Tyndale University College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The modern period has seen a loss of confidence in traditional interpretations due to an exclusive focus on the historical meaning of the text and a corresponding neglect of the figurative or canonical meaning. This ...
Read More...
