Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 41.
Mistrust
One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 82.
Speed and Time
Like many modern advances, the domination of time turns into its opposite; absolute control of time through absolute speed, speed for its own sake, leaves us feeling we have no control of time.
Peter Leithart, Solomon Among the Postmoderns, 42.
More than Salvation
This whole notion is rooted in the realization that Christianity is not just involved with “salvation” but with the total man in the total world. The Christian message begins with the existence of God forever and then with creation. It does not begin with salvation. We must be thankful for salvation, but the Christian message is more than that.
Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, 89.
Gothic Africans??
Why did we ever force the Africans to use Gothic architecture? It’s a meaningless exercise. All we succeeded in doing was making Christianity foreign to the African. If a Christian artist is Japanese, his paintings should be Japanese, if Indian, Indian.
Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, 76.
NSA Spring Concert Video
Knowledge of One’s Language
Educated speakers are notoriously unreliable in analyzing their own language. If Chrysostom weighs two competing interpretations, his conclusion should be valued as an important opinion and no more. If, on the other hand, he fails to address a linguistic problem because he does not appear to perceive a possible ambiguity, his silence is of the greatest value in helping us determine how Paul’s first readers were likely to have interpreted the text.
Moisés Silva, Philippians, 27.
Swearing people are verbally farting
Swearing people are verbally farting, I explain to my children, and one often gets trapped that way, playing free and easy with God’s name, edging into off-colour jokes unbecoming the tongue of a child of the king (Eph. 5:3-14), lost in a vile, scoffing sort of raping with the mouth, because one has not been faithful in undergirding, developing and norming the semantic quality of one’s communication. If one has poor grammar and no mastery of syntax, no colour to his vocabulary, then one has no control, no depth, no persuasive power to his language. So it’s very tempting to bolster one’s weak talk by pulling in dues ex machine exclamations and by violating different social and ethical norms in order to grab attention, trying to load your speech powerfully enough to gain dominating control of the communicating situation. But it is in vain, because God’s creational order forbids it. The havoc of hate takes place. Dirty and God-damning talk is terribly destructive. But that is not “strong language” any more than rape is passionate love.
-Seerveld, An Obedient Aesthetic Life, 54.
All that Glitters Ought to be Gold
“I think gold was meant to be seldom seen, and to be admired as a precious thing; and I sometimes wish that truth should so far literally prevailed as that all should be gold that glittered, or rather that nothing should glitter that was not gold.
John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 50.
Architecture
Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that they sight of them may contribute to his health, power, and pleasure.
John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 8.
Robinson Crusoe on the Providence of God
“If so, nothing can happen in the great Circuit of his Works, either without his Knowledge or Appointment. And if nothing happens without his Knowledge, he knows that I am here, and am in this dreadful Condition; and if nothing happens without his Appointment, he has appointed all this to befal me.”
– Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, 79.
This quote from Robinson Crusoe exemplifies Defoe’s Calvinistic worldview. There is of course the doctrine of Predestination involved, and how God created, knows, and is in control of all things. But much further than that, this passage shows Defoe’s doctrine of Salvation. He starts with the question of where everything came from, and ends with adoring that Creator. Realizing that God is the Creator leaves Robinson Crusoe without any pride. He has nothing to stand on which God has not given him, therefore all complaining, all rebellion, and all despair loose their place and meaning. Having contemplated these things the only thing for Crusoe to do is to cry out to God, praise him, and trust him in all he does. He has no more right to question God’s eternal decree’s as to his location than a tree on the island would. He therefore can rest in the confidence that God has brought this about for his good, and not for his evil. Crusoe’s next question was to ask why God had chosen to bring these things upon him. He had scarcely thought this when he realized how he had been going against God’s will and his life’s calling all his days. In spite of all this, Crusoe realized that God had spared him through incredible circumstances. How can Crusoe doubt that God was up to something in his life? When Christ offers grace to a particular sinner, that grace is irresistible and un-stoppable.
New Saint Andrews Christmas Concert
The Pagan’s Intellect
“What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything.”
C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost, 99.
The Battered but Safe εκκλησια
“There is pleasure to be on board a ship battered by a storm, when we are certain that it will not perish: the persecutions buffeting the Church are of this kind.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 617.
Bordedom
“Nothing is so intolerable for man as to be in a state of complete tranquility, without passions, without business, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nothingness, his abandonment, his inadequacy, his dependence, his helplessness, his emptiness. At once from the depths of his soul arise boredom, gloom, sadness, grief, vexation, despair.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 515.
Wilson vs Hitchens Documentary Preview
Creation, Evolution, and Genesis
Greetings class!
I wanted to encourage you to take, or at least audit, Dr. Wilson’s Creation, Evolution, and Genesis elective! As Christians, we need to be equipped to interact with the secular arguments aimed at destroying the basis for Christ’s authority: that He is Creator, and we are the Created.
We are blessed to have Dr. Wilson, who has not only learned all these issues in depth, but has much experience in actually debating the champions of Evolution.
So sign up for his class before it gets too full!
(remember, the class schedule has changed so that Dr. Wilson’s elective doesn’t conflict with other electives.)
This course surveys the watershed issues in the creation/evolution controversy. Students will learn important
definitions and make key distinctions to avoid misunderstandings and ill-informed straw-man arguments. They will also gain a basic understanding of the following topics: creation according to scripture, science and its limitations, origins according to secular man, irreducible complexities, created kinds and the natural limits to biological change, the fossil record and the age of the earth. The students will be reminded how to properly wield this knowledge rhetorically with those who differ, believers and unbelievers alike, so that if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone (Rom. 12:18).
Labour Saving Machinary
“There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour…I will forgive Mordor-gadgets some of their sins, if they will bring [this letter] quickly to you…”
J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to his son Christopher, 7 July 1944.
Tolkien and His Car
“There was the unforgettable occasion in 1932 when Tolkien bought his first car, a Morris Cowley that was nicknamed ‘Jo’…After learning to drive he took the entire family by car to visit his brother Hilary…At various times during the journey ‘Jo’ sustained two punctures and knocked down part of a dry-stone wall near Chipping Norton, with the result that Edith refused to travel in the car again until some months later – not entirely without justification, for Tolkien’s driving was daring rather than skilful. when accelerating headlong across a busy main road in Oxford in order to get into a side-street, he would ignore all other vehicles and cry ‘Charge ’em and they scatter!’ – and scatter they did.”
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 162.
The Tolkiens
“A principal source of happiness to them was their shared love for their family…Tolkien was immensely kind and understanding as a father, never shy of kissing his sons in public even when they were grown men, and never reserved in his display of warmth and love.”
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 161.