Ross Douthat on the Possibility of Pluralism
This is exactly why I read Ross Douthat. He holds out more hope for the possibilities of pluralism than I do, though I wish I could join him. I just find it hard to see any true pluralism in a large nation to be stable long-term. The fall has so deeply affected us. But I won't say that the Bible's clear teaching about the fall demands my pessimism; Paul holds out hope that "quiet and peaceable lives" are possible. Then again, he appeals obliquely to the fall himself in the last paragraph of...
Cosmos
I'm a bit late to this, but I stole a few minutes this week from my non-TV endeavors (that would describes almost all my endeavors, actually) to catch the first episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's reboot of Carl Sagan's famous science documentary, Cosmos. Neil deGrasse Tyson is surely gifted at what he does; his excitement is infectious. And his tour of the known universe, accompanied by beautiful computer graphics, was fascinating. I stood in awe not only of deGrasse Tyson's cosmic yarn but of...
E. Nesbit on Proof
Searching for public domain books to read to my small son, I ran across E. Nesbit's Five Children and It. I remembered that Lewis expressed some appreciation for Nesbit, and I was delighted to hear in her some of the same wit and keen observation of children's ways that I love in Lewis. Here's a great sample: Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That...
Joshua 24:19
In 1809, when he was thirty-seven, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge paused to recall a youthful dream, a plan he had hatched fifteen years earlier to immigrate to America and start there a new society governed by his own homemade intellectual system, which he called Pantisocracy. He wrote: What I dared not expect from constitutions of Government and whole Nations, I hoped from Religion and a small Company of chosen Individuals, and formed a plan, as harmless as it was extravagant, of trying...
Two Stories I Think About Sometimes
Story 1 Many years ago I remarked to a group of grad school friends, “One of the goals I have for my seminary education is to get myself to the place where I could write a good commentary.” One girl in the group wrinkled up her nose and said, “I can’t think of anything more boring!” She was a very smart girl, but she had grown up being told that scholarship deadens Bible study. She would never have thought that scholarship deadened her own academic field, in which she was very proficient. In...