I've blogged about Thomas Nagel a bit before. I have not read his Mind and Cosmos, but I've read a good deal about it, and I've found the conversation fascinating and, more importantly, important! Here's the latest summing up of the controversy, from an excellent...
Books
Review: The Liberal Arts: A Student’s Guide
The Liberal Arts: A Student's Guide by Gene C. Fant Jr. My rating: 2 of 5 stars Sometimes I skip to the end of a book review when I'm reading it in a rush. I think I'll try that while writing one: don't buy this book. Get Al Wolters' Creation Regained instead. Now on...
Review: White Noise
White Noise by Don DeLillo My rating: 4 of 5 stars I am not smart enough nor skilled enough in literary criticism to explain why this book merits four stars. I did feel while reading that I was in the presence of a truly superior intellect. But I'm gonna try to say...
Review: Date Your Wife
Date Your Wife by Justin Buzzard My rating: 3 of 5 stars A book of its gospel-centered time, and I think that's mostly pretty much all good. But not completely. Like those dramatic, one-sentence paragraphs. I'm about to issue a Protestant fatwa against those. And I...
*The 1,000th Post Mega-Prize Giveaway!*
I have reached post 1,000 on my blog! A lot of those thousand posts are little things like links and quotes, but a lot of them are dense with prose I created myself, as bloggers do, using an old-fashioned recipe of 2 parts keyboard and 3 parts research opinions coming...
Review: The Abolition of Man
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars In The Abolition of Man Lewis argues for the "Tao"—his ad hoc technical term for natural law. Several people recommended this to me as the best case for natural law. I'm not ready to say that, because it...
Christians in the Public Square
Chapter 7 of Tim Keller's Generous Justice provides a very useful summary of theologically sound advice for Christians in the public square. His thesis is that "Christians' work for justice should be characterized by both humble cooperation and respectful...
Review: After Chapters & Verses: Engaging the Bible in the Coming Generations
After Chapters & Verses: Engaging the Bible in the Coming Generations by Christopher R. Smith My rating: 4 of 5 stars I hope to write a publishable review of this book in the future. I’ll just take this Goodreads/blogging opportunity to offer some of my favorite...
Review: Is There Anybody Out There?: A Journey from Despair to Hope
Is There Anybody Out There?: A Journey from Despair to Hope by Mez McConnell My rating: 4 of 5 stars I thoroughly enjoyed watching God's amazing grace change this drug-addicted burglar and all-around street tough. I listened to him give his testimony in an interview...
The Pay-Off of a New Bible Format
The point of my somewhat tongue-in-cheek "Bible Typography Manifesto" is to encourage better and more healthy Bible reading practices by rethinking the format in which we encounter God's word. To that end, I'm reading a book by Christopher Smith called After Chapters...
Moisés Silva on the Hermeneutical Spiral
Moisés Silva's essay in Revelation and Reason: New Essays in Reformed Apologetics offers a somewhat startling thesis: "My theological system should tell me how to exegete." (86) Many exegetes profess to come to the text sans system, but Silva argues that because this...
Review: A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America
A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America by John A. D'Elia My rating: 4 of 5 stars George Eldon Ladd dedicated his life to the goal of a “rehabilitated evangelicalism, in both content and image.” (176) He...