Month: October 2008
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Proud to be Protestant
In the few years that I have been an Anglican, I have met a number of people who identify themselves as Anglo-Catholics. What these particular Anglo-Catholics mean by this, of course, is that they are Anglicans who see themselves in unbroken communion with the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” What they do not mean…
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If You’re Not Much of a Hugger…
My colleague Joe Henderson has been in a cave writing a doctoral dissertation. But today, he poked his head out long enough to relay his hesitancy to hug. ‘I’m a handshaker, not a hugger,’ Joe tells me. He’s not alone. Fellow-blogger and colleague Fred Sanders is another non-hugger. For all of you non-huggers, then, and…
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Torrey In Two Houses
The Torrey Honors Institute is splitting into two houses: Morgan House and Johnson House. John Mark Reynolds, Paul Spears, and Fred Sanders (Professors all) discuss why the split was necessary, what it means for current students, and its impact on the future of Torrey. Click here to listen to this edition of Middlebrow.
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Leave it to a poet…
A selection from W. H. Auden, ‘The Poet & The City’, in The Dyer’s Hand and other essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 86-87 …to speak sense into politics. ‘There are two kinds of political issues, Party issues and Revolutionary issues. In a party issue, all parties are agreed as to the nature and justice…
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Patriotism Firmly Rooted in Mid-Air
One morning last week, as I was driving to the Biola campus to teach a session on Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, I came across two vehicles with two very different sets of bumper stickers. One said “God Bless the World,” and the other, displaying his patriotism for all to see, featured a proud portrayal of the…
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A Theology of Hugging
I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about the call to let others be. This, I take it, is the ethical correlate of the Christian doctrine of creation, in which the perfectly strong God makes room for the world, in which he lets it be. It is true that creation is always utterly dependent on…
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The Coming of the Book
What are the major events in the history of salvation, according to Christianity? If you made a little diagram with stick figures, what would you have to include? The choosing of Abraham, of course. The giving of the law, and the whole Mosaic ministry of God redeeming his people from Egypt and making them his…
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Victor Davis Hanson: Thucydides
On October 8th, Victor Davis Hanson spoke at Biola University on Thucydides: Understanding the Pellopenessian War and the principles which translate from a study of this ancient Greek historian to the modern political-cultural sphere. This event was sponsored by the Biola Marines Club and the Torrey Honors Institute. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution,…
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Vocabulary Quiz on The Horse and His Boy
A few years ago, I taught the Chronicles of Narnia as part of a college course. I always feel odd teaching a class on books that people read for fun, books with a very high entertainment value. Isn’t that what people outside the academy assume we’re doing on campus: giving college credit for watching cartoons…
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Lyra Fidelium
Samuel J. Stone (1839-1900) was an Anglican clergyman and poet whose claim to fame is that he wrote the hymn, The Church’s One Foundation. But that’s just the hit single off a great album. That hymn is from an interesting collection that Stone wrote in 1866 entitled Lyra Fidelium: Twelve Hymns on the Twelve Articles…
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Are the Harry Potter Novels Great Books?
Homer, Cicero, Calvin, Austen, Nietzsche, and Rowling? John Granger joins Middlebrow’s John Mark Reynolds and Paul Spears to discuss whether the Potter novels belong in the canon of great Western literature. Listen to it here!