Edmund Waller on 10/10/10, Or Maybe—Let’s Face It—10/10/40
The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made; Stronger by weakness, wiser men become, As they draw near to their eternal home. Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new. —Edmund Waller (1606–1687)
Love Makes the Top Ten
Love is the third most looked-up word on Merriam-Webster.com. The editors note wisely, “We're guessing that many people arrive at our site with a question—‘what is the meaning of love?’—that actually requires answers beyond a dictionary definition.” Kudos to the editors at M&W, who know the important difference between the meaning of a word and the thing or idea it denotes.
Hallelujah Flash Mobs
If you have not yet seen the following videos (I put the better one first), then forget for once all that useless stuff I just posted about being distracted by the Internet, and just watch. I was moved to tears by both videos. It is so powerful to hear such beautiful music sung, I fear, by many people for whom the words ultimately mean nothing aside from a more cultured Christmas. But to me, and I hope to many of them, Jesus is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords. One day He will reign. All...
Informing Ourselves to Death
The danger of constant connection is a becoming a relentless theme among people whose highest goals are merely laying up treasure on earth. For those who want to lay up treasure in heaven, this warning ought to carry an even greater weight. I want treasure in heaven. I want it. So I am fighting a battle to use technology without being mastered by it.
Charles Hodge on Free Will
I've read a good number of pages on the nature of the human will recently, and little has been as helpful on free will as Charle's Hodge's brief summary in his Systematic Theology. He speaks of three views of the will: necessity, contingency, and certainty. I won't go into the first and third (click here to read the whole section for yourself; it's about eight relatively small pages), but here is his excellent development of the second view of the will. This is not Hodge's view, but it a view...