Reformation21

The Welsh have not (generally) adopted that legacy of Platonism in post-Renaissance culture, commonly called "the stiff upper-lip." The Welsh, you see, give voice to their complaints with reckless abandonment. Typical here is Wales's most famous twentieth century poet and writer, Dylan Thomas, in...

At the end of a lecture, I often find myself being asked questions by a student who prefaces what he or she has to say with the phrase `This may be a stupid question, but....' My response is almost always the same: there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. Perhaps that it a little...

I will delay answering the above question until the end of the article. Instead, I want to start by noting that Father Richard John Neuhaus has some good fun at Protestantism's expense in the latest First Things . In the priceless `While We're at It' section, RJN quotes (page 80) from a recent...

In recent times Charles Hodge has come in for a drubbing in connection with his remarks on the nature of what he calls theological science, as these are set out in the first seventeen pages of his Systematic Theology. (See, for example, Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How...

This past week, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, kissed a seven year old boy--on the stomach! Context: the President had bent down to ask the boy his name; the boy in embarrassment rolled up his T-shirt over his face thereby exposing his stomach; what else was a politician to do? Almost...

Waiting for a flight to Philadelphia in Heathrow Terminal 4 recently, I engaged in my usual ritual: buying my children copies of the Beano and the Dandy comics, and some chocolate that tastes like real chocolate (seemingly illegal in the USA), and finding a present for my wife. A couple of years...

"To invert a famous quip of Gore Vidal, in theology, it is not enough for heretics to fail; the church must succeed." Last summer, I was fortunate enough to spend some weeks working at a church in Scotland, just outside of Edinburgh. It was certainly good to enjoy extended time back in the old...

A simple, isolated statement about belief in scriptural authority is not enough on its own to distinguish Protestants from Catholics. Some months ago, Wheaton College was thrust into the limelight in circumstances which caused what can only be described as a nightmare for those in charge of the...

The Braves are playing poorly. Not that I'd notice too much. You see, it's my wife's love--baseball that is, not mine. And she has lost something of her joie de vivre . I try to console, but when those guys swing and miss all the time, it makes for an unhappy time. Baseball is her way of relaxation...

Recently, I had occasion to fly to Korea via San Francisco. Flying across the US on a clear day is one of those rare pleasures which really allows you to get the geographical measure of the place: how flat much of the country is; how the snow-capped Rockies push the land upwards towards the sky in...