Recently I was sitting at a table in the food court of our local shopping mall. As I looked over the court and watched the mall’s denizens, I wondered what America’s Founders would have thought of it all. Of course, when you put the question that way, you think first of what they would think … [Read more…]
There’s a new book out, A Summer with Pascal, by Antoine Compagnon. I have not read it, but I did read a review of it in the Wall Street Journal last week (July 27-28, 2024, at page C12), and it looks interesting. I feel I should note the book’s publication on this blogsite — after … [Read more…]
The last letter that the apostle Paul wrote was likely Second Timothy, and on the last page of the current issue of Touchstone magazine there is a thoughtful column about it (Patrick Henry Reardon, “As It Is Written …: The Library Left Behind,” Touchstone, July/August 2024, at 56; here’s the link). The column focuses, in … [Read more…]
I recently posted this on National Review Online‘s “The Corner”: I very much enjoyed Kayla Bartsch’s Corner post on Friday (“Sociology Comes for Sundays”) and would like to add a bit to it. It is certainly true that “religious practice” can have a variety of secular benefits, even if one lacks solid faith, and that noting … [Read more…]
Premise: Christians believe that God wants us to love one another and, even prior to that, to love Him; salvation also requires that we accept Jesus Christ as divine. See, e.g., John 3:16-18 and 14:6. Now, it is commonly argued that it seems very unfair that someone who leads a good life, full of selfless … [Read more…]
Joseph Epstein is what used to be called, and I guess still is, a “man of letters.” That is, he is a writer of his own books, essays, and shorter pieces, on a wide variety of nonscientific subjects, as well as a literary critic. If you’ve run across him lately, it’s probably through short columns … [Read more…]
There are a variety of plans for reading the Bible in a year but — call me a cynic — I bet it has happened more than once that a person embarking on one or the other fails to finish the Bible by December 31. Let’s face it: The Bible is a pretty long book, … [Read more…]
These two books were cited in one of the extensive (and valuable) endnotes in the excellent Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald T. Tacelli. Since the two were mentioned together and cover similar subject matter, but with each taking — as Kreeft and Tacelli put it — “a very different view,” I thought … [Read more…]
John Knox (c. 1514-1572) was a Scottish minister and Reformed theologian, who was a leader in his country’s Reformation and, indeed, the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. This book is one of the “Long Line of Godly Men Profile” series, other titles of which I’ve also reviewed on this blogsite. The idea of … [Read more…]
My wife and I recently went to see a new performance — revival, if that’s the right use of the term — of the 1971 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. This was part of the show’s tour, so we were just lucky to see it so close to Resurrection Sunday, and it gives me the … [Read more…]