Fish on Academic Freedom
I call in thinkers like C. S. Lewis and Stanley Fish when I need some incision—when I need someone to help me cut through the rhetoric, to help me get down to those little tacks made of a copper-zinc alloy. Those little things are, it seems, always there. Issues surrounding academic freedom are in dire need of incisive commentary, and Fish serves it up again.
James K. A. Smith on CCM
While doing a little Internet poking around on James K. A. Smith, I stumbled across this choice quotation from the pleistocine era of the blogosphere (namely about eight months ago). Sorry I missed it: Trevin Wax: How would you respond to the person who says the forms of worship are interchangeable, but the message must always remain constant? While admitting there is flexibility in forms from culture to culture, I think you’d want to push against the idea that the forms don’t matter. James K....
A Good Intro to the Neo-Calvinism vs. Two Kingdoms Debate
From an excellent, brief article on Neo-Calvinism vs. Two Kingdoms theology by David Koyzis: From my readings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Rawls and many other professed liberals, I have come to conclude that liberalism must be understood in terms of its longstanding quest to reduce the complexity of human communities to mere voluntary associations. This is the significance of the social contract, which is nothing less than a redefining of the proper task of the state. Rather than...
BibleWorks Seminar Follow-Up
Many thanks to the guys who came out to my six-hour BibleWorks seminar on Saturday. We all worked hard, and you came out way ahead of where you were when you started. And I discovered that Presbyterians do, in fact, eat donuts. Here are all my posts on Unicode, as promised. And here's my resource page for refresher videos on BibleWorks if you ever need them.
WallBuilders and Media Ecology
I met an interesting, globe-trotting conservative Pentecostal technology wonk at a conference I recently attended. A sharp guy who has done significant thinking and speaking about the problems created in our brains by the overuse and misuse of technology, particularly among teens. I dropped in to one of his break-out sessions and found myself asking the Lord for grace to heed this wonk's wisdom. I have especially been thinking about his suggestion that toggling back and forth among...