The Christian Theologically-Inclined Reader and Kindle 2 (aka Kindle Review)
I saved up for my Kindle for a good while, and I was very excited to receive it! I have not been disappointed. Here are a few of the major benefits: The Kindle has made available to me texts that hitherto had been locked onto my computer. It's just not convenient to take my laptop to bed with me—or to church, or to the Bi-Lo parking lot, or to a boring meeting. But now the articles and book chapters and whole books that lay dormant on my hard drive are getting read. The Kindle has also made...
Jacobs on Augustine on the Hermeneutic of Love
To persons who claim that their understanding of Scripture comes from God alone and not from mere humans, Augustine replies that God didn’t teach them the letters of the alphabet. —Alan Jacobs, A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky
What's going to happen now that the internet has blown the old financial model which kept newspapers afloat for so long? An interesting essay by Clay Shirky suggests what I, too, think is the right answer: I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age.... We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will...
Seek Glory for Yourself, But Don’t Be Self-Seeking
Here's a paragraph from Romans 2 that has occasioned no small discussion among Protestant commentators: He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but...
How Science Fiction Found Religion by Benjamin A. Plotinsky, City Journal Winter 2009
Popular art both reflects and forges popular culture. Science is the ultimate authority for so many in the West, so it shows up in movies. “The Force” is one detail in which the new [Star Wars] films are actually less spiritual than the old. In the 1977 movie, Obi-Wan described this mysterious entity as “what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things; it surrounds us, penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.” In the 1980 sequel, Yoda . . . instructed Luke to...