The NSA Spring Concert Video is up:
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.
Tolkien’s Friendship with Lewis
“Friendship with Lewis compensates for much, and besides giving constant pleasure and comfort has done me much good from the contact with a man at once honest, brave, intellectual – a scholar, a poet, and a philosopher – and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage, of Our Lord.”
J.R.R Tolkien, quoted in, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 152.
Tolkien’s Humour
He could laugh at anybody, but most of all at himself, and his complete lack of any sense of dignity could and often did make him behave like a riotous schoolboy. At a New Year’s Eve party in the nineteen-thirties he would don an Icelandic sheepskin hearthrug and paint his face white to impersonate a polar bear, or he would dress up as an Anglo-Saxon warrior complete with axe and chase an astonished neighbour down the road. Later in life he delighted to offer inattentive shopkeepers his false teeth among a handful of change. ‘I have,’ he once wrote, ‘a very simple sense of humour, which even my appreciative critics find tiresome.’
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 134.
The un-importance of News
[Tolkien], like his friend C.S. Lewis, regards ‘news’ as on the whole trivial and fit to be ignored, and they both argue (to the annoyance of many of their friends) that the only ‘truth’ is to be found in literature. However, they both enjoy the crossword.
J.R.R. Tolkien – A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter, 121.
Finding God in the Lord of the Rings
“Tolkien cast his mythology in his form because he wanted it to be remote and strange, and yet at the same time not to be a lie. He wanted the mythology and legendary stories to express his own moral view of the universe; and as a Christian he could not place this view in a cosmos without the God that he worshipped. At the same time, to set his stories ‘realistically’ in the known world, where religious beliefs were explicitly Christian, would deprive them of imaginative colour. So while God is present in Tolkien’s universe, He remains unseen.
When he wrote the Silmarillion Tolkien believed that in one sense he was writing truth. He did not suppose that precisely such peoples as he described as, ‘elves’, ‘dwarves’, and malevolent ‘orcs’, had walked the earth and done the deed that he recorded. But he did feel, or hope, that his stories were in some sense an embodiment of a profound truth.
J.R.R. Tolkien – A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 99.
The Letter that got Mr. Stephen Boissoin in Big Trouble
The Following is the actual letter written by Rev. Stephen Boissoin who was at the time National Chairman of the Concerned Christian Coalition (now Concerned Christians Canada Inc.) It is this letter that has the Rev. Stephen Boissoin and Concerned Christians Canada Inc., (CCC) appearing before The Alberta Human Rights Commission.
Homosexual agenda wicked
Rev. Steven Boissoin
Central Alberta Chairman Concerned Christian Coalition
6/17/02
The following is not intended for those who are suffering from an unwanted sexual identity crisis. For you, I have understanding, care, compassion and tolerance. I sympathize with you and offer you my love and fellowship.
I prayerfully beseech you to seek help, and I assure you that your present enslavement to homosexuality can be remedied. Many outspoken, former homosexuals are free today.
Instead, this is aimed precisely at every individual that in any way supports the homosexual machine that has been mercilessly gaining ground in our society since the 1960s. I cannot pity you any longer and remain inactive. You have caused far too much damage.
My banner has now been raised and war has been declared so as to defend the precious sanctity of our innocent children and youth, that you so eagerly toil, day and night, to consume. With me stand the greatest weapons that you have encountered to date: God and the “Moral Majority.” Know this, we will defeat you, then heal the damage you have caused.
Modern society has become dispassionate to the cause of righteousness. Many people are so apathetic and desensitized today that they cannot even accurately define the term “morality.”
The masses have dug in and continue to excuse their failure to stand against horrendous atrocities such as the aggressive propagation of homo- and bisexuality. Inexcusable justifications such as, “I’m just not sure where the truth lies,” or “If they don’t affect me then I don’t care what they do,” abound from the lips of the quantifiable majority.
Face the facts, it is affecting you. Like it or not, every professing heterosexual is having their future aggressively chopped at the roots. Edmund Burke’s observation that, “All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” has been confirmed time and time again. From kindergarten class on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.
Our children are being victimized by repugnant and premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.
Your children are being warped into believing that same-sex families are acceptable; that men kissing men is appropriate.
Your teenagers are being instructed on how to perform so-called safe same gender oral and anal sex and at the same time being told that it is normal, natural and even productive. Will your child be the next victim that tests homosexuality positive?
Come on people, wake up! It’s time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness that our lethargy has authorized to spawn. Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.
Regardless of what you hear, the militant homosexual agenda isn’t rooted in protecting homosexuals from “gay bashing.” The agenda is clearly about homosexual activists that include, teachers, politicians, lawyers, Supreme Court judges, and God forbid, even so-called ministers, who are all determined to gain complete equality in our nation and even worse, our world.
Don’t allow yourself to be deceived any longer. These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centred and morally deprived individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.
The homosexual agenda is not gaining ground because it is morally backed. It is gaining ground simply because you, Mr. and Mrs. Heterosexual, do nothing to stop it. It is only a matter of time before some of these same morally bankrupt individuals such as those involved with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Lovers Association, will achieve their goal to have sexual relations with children and assert that it is a matter of free choice and claim that we are intolerant bigots not to accept it.
If you are reading this and think that this is alarmist, then I simply ask you this: how bad do things have to become before you will get involved? It’s time to start taking back what the enemy has taken from you. The safety and future of our children is at stake.
Rev. Stephen Boissoin
Central Alberta Chairman
Concerned Christian Coalition