Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
From his Elevations on the Mysteries, XV-IV: His name will be Emmanuel: God with us. These are the mystical names which the Prophets give in spirit, to explain certain effects of divine power, which are necessary for those who use them. If we understand the force of that name Emmanuel, we find that of the …
Continue reading "His Name Will Be Emmanuel: Bossuet on "God With Us""
This comment from one Dr. Clarence Charles on the testimony of Sir Lionel Luckhoo is worth repeating: As I meditate on Psalm 1 today, I contrasted the glorious life of Sir Lionel Luckhoo and its outcome, with the inglorious one of Jim Jones and his clan and their outcome in a piece entitled, "Eleven Days …
It's supposed to be the time of year for joy and merriment, but I've seen a few things lately that bother me about the immediate course of the country. Most of those concern foreign policy, that necessary evil Americans aren't very good at, even with all the years of travel and media coverage. (I think …
Continue reading "Let's Not Do Something Stupid About the Russians"
It's been a bit since Ephraim Radner and Christopher Seitz "crossed the Rubicon" and set forth The Marriage Pledge, which calls ministers to stop officiating civil marriages. Reactions have been mixed. The fact that I can say that shows that the steady legalisation of same-sex civil marriage has forced Christians--who have been working to "preserve marriage", …
Continue reading "The Marriage Pledge: A Gratifying Step on Civil vs. Ecclesiastical Marriage"
Today is the Feast of Christ the King. The script that calls out the liturgical year on this site simply refers to this as the Sunday before Advent, and that's what it was for centuries. The idea of this feast--at the end of the liturgical year--comes from the "new theology", one that generally gets a …
Many of you know that, in spite of a lot of what turns up on this blog, I am a member of the North Cleveland Church of God and worked for the church's International Offices in the Lay Ministries Department for 13 1/2 years. So I'm not a stranger to at least some of our …
Continue reading "My Challenge to Church of God Ministers: Take the Marriage Pledge"
The Republican "wave" (what that means electorally depends upon whom you talk to) in the recent Congressional elections has highlighted their opponents' weaknesses at the state level. To a large extent there are two electorates: one at the mid-term and one at the Presidential year. The one thing these two have in common, according to …
Continue reading "Maybe the Democrats Don't Need a Deep Electoral Bench"
I've not had the time lately to post in as timely fashion as I would like, mostly because of the semester-by-semester crapshoot which is my PhD pursuit. But there's a long-term issue that deserves some comment, and that concerns a long-overdue attitude adjustment that Evangelicals need to make because of events in the Middle East. …
Continue reading "The Evangelical Comeuppance in the Middle East"
In this wild election cycle, a Republican is about to break a record she wasn't "supposed to": An upstate New York Republican is slated Tuesday to shatter the congressional record of former Brooklyn Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Elise Stefanik, 30, is favored to win in New York’s …
In the middle of Julian Assange's long diatribe on Google, we have this: The received wisdom in advanced capitalist societies is that there still exists an organic “civil society sector” in which institutions form autonomously and come together to manifest the interests and will of citizens. The fable has it that the boundaries of this …
Positive Infinity 