Art and Music: A Student's Guide by Paul Munson My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was really an excellent little book. Accessible, perceptive, engaging, and rooted in that Christian intellectual tradition this little Crossway series is aiming to reclaim. It loses one star...
Culture
Homosexuality and Worldview
I've spent the last year and a half immersed in understanding the Christian worldview and explaining it to twelfth graders. The last few days I've done a lot of writing on homosexuality (after many years of reading on the topic in articles and books), and I just came...
Internecine Catholic Warfare
Well, "warfare" may be a little strong. But blog headlines have to pull you in. And it could happen. I don't have much connection to internecine Catholic disagreement. I overhear a little of it in First Things, but the value of Ross Douthat is that he is a clear...
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Conference Streaming Live
Yesterday and today I've been watching some of the sessions of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission National Conference; they're streaming live. Here's the schedule. The theme is issues of gender and sexuality, which I happen to be writing on at this very...
The Self-Dynamiting Doctrine of Papal Infallibility
A faithful and intelligent Catholic, New York Times opinion writer Ross Douthat, offers some helpful reflections on papal infallibility: On paper, that doctrine seems to grant extraordinary power to the pope—since he cannot err, the First Vatican Council declared in...
Powerfully Compact Quote from James Davison Hunter
This is one from UVA prof James Davison Hunter is worth chewing on, as is the book: Christians recognize that all social organizations exist as parodies of eschatological hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imitation of heavenly community;13 the modern state, a...
Usage Determines Meaning for the Middle-Aged
Usage Determines Meaning, and I'm going to illustrate it by putting myself down a little bit. A close friend of mine heard me refer to someone else as "middle-aged" in such a way as to distinguish myself from that age group. I, I implied, was "young," not...
Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation
Ammon Shea’s Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation is a collection of tiny essays on dozens and dozens of supposed grammar and usage errors in English. In every case, Shea finds a writer who decries the usage (like "hopefully" to mean "I hope that") then...
The Declaration of Independence Proves to Be An Illusion
Satan led humankind into covenant disobedience. He tempted humankind to reject the rule of Yahweh and to issue their "declaration of independence" from their Creator. The consequences are devastating. When communion with the Creator of life is broken, death inevitably...
Hometown Boy Makes Good
BJU alum Dan Forrest receives well-deserved praise for oft-performed new work.
The Good Life and Lena Dunham
Richard Mouw* makes an interesting comment in his book on common grace: perhaps the only way to really know how well a moral theology does is to see it worked out in a group: We can fully understand the claims of a theological perspective only if we attempt to see...
Gordon College May Lose Accreditation Over Opposition to Homosexuality
I am not an alarmist, but this is really serious: Gordon College may lose its accreditation over its opposition to homosexuality. Carl Trueman was so right six years ago. I'll put up his money quote on the blog again: What is becoming increasingly clear is that the...