You can always count on this blogsite to ask and answer the easy questions! One must acknowledge first of all that God is intelligent and all-present to an extent and in ways that we cannot begin to fathom. But here are some thoughts I had on what His relationship with us might be like: Think … [Read more…]
Not only is the Scriptural basis of the Trinity solid (see here and here, for example), but the concept makes sense. For example, it enables the eternity of love, making it easy to understand how love could exist even before the Creation: The three elements of the Trinity could love one another. And the Trinity … [Read more…]
R.C. Sproul is an important American Reformed theologian, and John Piper calls this book a “classic.” One fan of Dr. Sproul told me that a great value of this book is that the holiness of God reminds us how unholy we are. Along those lines, I noted, “Fear, discomfort, other-ness: That and not simple adoration … [Read more…]
I have Professor William Lane Craig to thank for flagging this amazing book, in a video of him speaking that I watched and took notes on years ago. It is a tour de force argument in favor of the historicity of the book of Acts. It is also extraordinarily evenhanded. The book’s basic scope and … [Read more…]
Colin J. Hemer’s book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History prompted me to think about why Luke wrote Acts. The beloved physician tells us he wrote his Gospel for the “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:1-4), who is likewise mentioned in its sequel Acts (1:1), but the point of the writing and then … [Read more…]
I read about this book in a number of different places, but in particular I had saved this description (128, footnote omitted) of it from George M. Marsden’s Mere Christianity: A Biography (discussed here on this blogsite): One commentator refers to [Kreeft] as “perhaps the most lucid and prolific Catholic apologist in the English-speaking world.” Kreeft’s … [Read more…]
I thought it worthwhile to include this link to T.S. Eliot’s introduction to an edition of Blaise Pascal’s Pensees. As the name of this blogsite indicates, I am a great fan of Pascal’s — and T.S. Eliot is, well, T.S. Eliot. I learned about the introduction from a recent Wall Street Journal review by Joseph … [Read more…]
This is a great big book: 889 pages, plus another 96 pages of bibliography and indices. Amusingly, the interlibrary loan slip accompanying the book had handwritten on it, “* Caution: heavy*.” The length and scope of this book require that I begin this blogpost by spending some time simply describing just what the book … [Read more…]
This 1975 book is essentially a beautiful 191-page essay by Malcolm Muggeridge, giving us his take on the Gospels. Now, when you think about it, those four mini-biographies of Jesus are together the most important 80,000 written words (the length of a quite short novel) we humans have, and of course Muggeridge is one of … [Read more…]
This excellent 1976 book by Malcolm Muggeridge is a little over 200 pages long (no index or footnotes) and lavishly illustrated, with all of the color illustrations being works by William Blake. There was a television series by the same name, produced in association with Time-Life Films and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation among others, and … [Read more…]