Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
In an effort such as this blog to present Bossuet’s works in English, one thing that becomes clear is that resources about his life and works in English are rather sparse. As Sanders herself notes at the start of Jacques Bénigne Bossuet: A Study, “Yet in England, notwithstanding the widespread and increasing appreciation of French …
Continue reading "Book Review: Ella Katharine Sanders’ Jacques Bénigne Bossuet: A Study"
Ever wanted to spend time with someone who impacted your life but is now gone? As we see the annual odometer spin ever faster, that desire becomes more common. For Christians, we have the assurance that we will see those people who were likewise committed to Christ once again on the other side. But the …
I recently completed reading Charles and Mary Beard's The Rise of American Civilization, which at one time was one of the most influential texts on the subject. The Beards, as is typical with textbooks in general, frequently revised the text, mostly adding to the end to keep that up to date. The version I read …
Continue reading "Why Did They Cancel Charles and Mary Beard?"
For some reason, I've suddenly become the defender of things and people Anglo-Catholic. I've always been ambivalent about Anglo-Catholicism, from the "unEnglish and unmanly" aspect to their implicit lack of confidence in their own sacraments. I think what's changed is the fact that I find myself locking horns with Reformed types both inside and outside …
Most of you who stop by here regularly know that I am a big fan of Grady McWhiney's "Celtic South" idea. That adherence didn't come from theoretical considerations, but from hard experience. Some people characterize McWhiney's thesis as a form of "white supremacy," but that only shows the decline of reading comprehension among Americans. I …
One of the surprises I've gotten is that, even in conservative American churches, there are those in positions of influence who are pacifists. How can this be, especially since their core ethnic group is the bellicose Scots-Irish? But life is an education. Although it's tempting to regard Eric Patterson's Just American Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in …
Recently Duane Alexander Miller, a long-time friend of this blog, wrote Two Stories of Everything: The Competing Metanarratives of Islam and Christianity. My review of this excellent book is here at Global MIssology.
One of the things that makes writing this blog tricky is the simple fact that being a product of the Anglican and Catholic world on the one hand and being in the Pentecostal world on the other forces one to live in many "tensions" to borrow a term from the seminary academics. Some of those …
Continue reading "Book Review: Thomas Reeves’ Was Jesus an Evangelical?"
The history of the Twentieth Century is one written in blood. Between two world wars, the procession of genocides from Armenia to Stalin to the Holocaust, China and the Killing Fields, millions seemed to vanish for causes that are better hated than understood. Is there one conflict that we can look at than encapsulates the …
Continue reading "Why the Spanish Civil War is Still Important"
Educating new Christians in the basics of the faith has always been an important task of the Church. A few years back I featured a series on Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical Lectures, which date from the fourth century. Evangelical churches can be very casual about the whole business, their reputation for dogmatism notwithstanding. With Roman …
Continue reading "Revisiting the Catholicism of "Christ Among Us""
Positive Infinity 