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The Anger of George Herbert
This Saturday, February 27th, is the feast day of George Herbert, a poet and an Anglican priest who died in 1633, leaving behind him only one slim volume of poems and a book of advice to country parsons. His entire opus is not even three hundred pages long. Yet the depth of emotion and intellect… more »
Reason & Faith II: Engaging the Opposition
In my last post, I discussed disconfirmation bias and how it leads to intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance for Christians who do not truly engage criticism of their beliefs. This post, I want to flesh out some thoughts on what “engaging the opposition” really means. It wouldn’t do to critique the way people resolve (or… more »
Poets, Philosophers, and Beauty
If there is a war between reason and imagination, the first volley was fired by Plato, who famously decreed that poets were to be thrown out of his ideal city. This would be understandable if he were speaking only of the Greek equivalent of trashy romance novels; but he prohibits even Homer, who he admits… more »
An Ethical Example: Responding to “On Not Being Narrow-Minded”
After perusing the latest issue of the Ichthus, I had some reflections on Nick Nowalk’s latest feature “On Not Being Narrow-Minded.” Nick focuses heavily on the writings of Jonathan Edwards, a preacher from the first Great Awakening who was quite influential despite the fact that he graduated from Yale. Edwards resisted the Enlightenment thinkers who… more »
St. Thomas Aquinas and the Heretics
Recently I have been reading G.K. Chesterton’s excellent biography of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas’s chief task in life was to theologically battle the various forms of Gnosticism that threatened to overwhelm orthodox Christianity in the thirteenth century—forms both outside the church (such as the Persian Manichees) and inside it (such as the French Cathars)…. more »
How to Read the Bible
Recently, I’ve been reading through an excellent collection of country sermons by Fred B. Craddock called The Cherry Log Sermons.
The first sermon in the collection is, appropriately enough, about the story of Christmas. As familiar as the story of Christmas is, we oftentimes are more aware of the mythology surrounding Jesus’ birth than the actual… more »
Rand’s Vision of Heaven
Before becoming a Christian, I was a big fan of Ayn Rand. Her novels touched my soul in a way that no other novel has. After much reflection, I found her morality to be without foundation and thus somewhat futile. Yet there was still something that made her philosophy so attractive: she described the objective… more »
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