The New York Times Censors Me for the Second Time [CORRECTION APPENDED!]
I love reading Stanley Fish's long blog posts on the New York Times web site. A recent post of his reviewed a book which, apparently, repeats Stephen Jay Gould's argument that religion and science are "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA)—that is, two separate things doing separate jobs which need not come in conflict so there. Several times in the past, Fish has skewered sloppy thinking about science and faith, but this time his postmodern sensibilities (he's a premier postmodern literary...
You’re 1,300 in a Billion
A clever line delivered by Bill Gates to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, pointing out that the Chinese have a large talent base: “In China, when you’re one-in-a-million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.”
The Courage to Be Catholic
At the behest of a flashing sign on Wade Hampton, I’ve been listening to EWTN (Eternal World Television Network) radio. EWTN was founded in 1981 by a nun in full habit, Mother Angelica, and now broadcasts over both TV and radio. As you listen to their many radio programs, you get the feeling that American Catholicism—at least that brand represented by EWTN’s listernship—lives very self-consciously in the shadow of evangelicalism. Much more so than the other way around. There are many glowing...
The Love Chapter
You could be the world’s foremost orator, but if you aren’t motivated by love, you’re like a car alarm going off in a parking lot. You could give out God’s Word powerfully, know truth no one else does, and move mountains with your faith—but if you aren’t driven by love, you’re a spiritual zero. You could sell the entire contents of your home to give to the homeless, and you could be tortured and martyred at the hand of terrorists, but if you don’t do it for love, you get nothing out of it....
Frame on Helm on Providence
John Frame in a review of Paul Helm’s The Providence of God (Leicester, U. K.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993. 241pp.) Doesn't Scripture sometimes represent God as "taking risks," being ignorant, changing his mind, giving people the power to resist his will? Granted that Scripture also includes affirmations of God's foreordination of all things, should we accommodate the latter expressions to the former, or vice versa? Helm responds to this question by pointing out the theological costs...