Risus bellum!

Spurgeon wrote:

The man who serves his God with his whole heart is apt to forget his surroundings, and to fling himself so completely into his work that the whole of his nature comes into action, and even his humour, if he be possessed of that faculty, rushes into the battle (Eccentric Preachers, pp. 75-76).

I got this quote from Doug Wilson's blog. Risus bellum (Laughter is warfare).

An Artist with a Prophetic Voice

Click on the post title to read a letter to North American churches written by Makoto Fujimura. He is an abstract impressionist with a prophetic and learned voice.

What a God, What a Gift!

When the Greek men thought of an Almighty god, they created a lightening wielding, womanizer whose every seduction resulted in a pregnancy. Zeus fathered at least 100! God equals ultimate virility.

When the Hebrews received revelation from the one true God, he was "holy, holy, holy," and sex was his gift of one-flesh union to married couples. This loving union participated in the creative ability of God's own love. Out of the loving union of the Trinity, flowed creative acts that created people in his image ex nihilo. Out of the loving union of the married couple, flowed a creative act that produced children in the image of God. What a gift, what a God!!

Let's Talk About Conversation

Conversation: A History of a Declining Art by Stephen Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Miller traces the history of the "conversible world" of friends and acquaintances who discussed the big ideas of their day and how they shaped their world. The ancient world gets short shrift, but the 18th c. British  coffee houses get their due. Miller covers the likes of Samuel Johnson and David Hume and their discussion partners and contrasts this golden age of conversation with the lack of meaningful conversation happening today. Miller argues that the conversible world has shrunk. People no longer visit coffee houses for conversation but to use the wifi. We prefer friends at out fingertips rather than face time for important issues. Contrast this with the world of Johnson and Hume who made face time with friends one of the greatest joys of their intellectual lives.  


Johnson and Hume work well as about the only value they shared in common was a love of conversation. It would have been quite a spectacle had they ever met for coffee. Hume was the consummate skeptic who despised people who thought they were the most interesting topic of conversation. Miller agrees as he makes Rousseau the villain of this history. Rousseau thought his life worthy of a "Confessions" not written to God, like Augustine's Confessions, but to his fellow man. Rousseau's audience was evidently supposed to think that Rousseau's Confessions were some sort of anti-septic for all his questionable deeds.


Johnson sought out conversation to cure his melancholy. Recent research (not from Miller) has shown that it is a natural drug more helpful than any anti-depressant, though the anti-depressant can help get you out of the pit and back into the coffee house. Johnson and Miller like raillery and badinage instead of preoccupation with the self. Raillery is the jocular intellectual dueling that isn't underhanded but usually so over the top that it's just good clean fun for those who don't take themselves too seriously. Badinage is playful conversation that is usually refined by intellectual and experiential knowledge. It reminds me of GK Chesterton's tremendous trifles.


Miller's book is never dull, despite what other reviewers have said on Goodreads, and is a veritable gold mine of wisdom for learning the ropes of good conversation. If you want a practical guide for avoiding boredom and conversation stoppers and stimulating community then Miller's book is a great place to start. From a worldview perspective, Miller is a secularist who values religion for the issues it raises for rational discussion. He finds his religious friends, even those who accept the authority of the Bible, to be great discussion partners.


Miller however, never addresses the challenge that secularism poses to substantive conversation. Secularism promotes the idea that people must check their ultimate commitments at the door of public debate. This is the real conversation stopper and the greatest weakness of the book. Miller's work does serve as a good reminder that curiosity is born in conversation which demands a conversing community of honest intellectuals. This is a declining ideal.


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Way Beyond the Blues!

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Live Forever.

William Cavanaugh in his Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire argues that Christianity and consumerism are basically at odds. Christianity promises to cure our restlessness but consumerism tries to exploit it. But this doesn't mean that Christianity is totally against consumption. Worldly consumption actually detaches us from the objects we consume. We use something, throw it away, and then go shopping. No big deal. But when we consume our Lord's body and blood, we don't become detached but rather more attached to him.

Cavanaugh also points out that creation contains revelations of its creator. So when we consume it, we should be growing closer to him in our enjoyment of the created objects. They point beyond themselves to him. I remember being struck by how many times God told Israel to feast, and said that he would be with them in the midst of their enjoyment. Let's eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow we live forever!!

Infectious Hampsters!

The Not So Slippery Greece

Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times by Thomas R. Martin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Solid overview but with no substantial thesis. Martin focuses on the plight of the common man, women, and slaves whose existence changed little from down through the ages. Martin documents it as "nasty, brutish, and short" no matter the period: prehistoric, classical, or hellenistic.

The prose is accessible though not not especially memorable. Discussions are informative with a few quotes from the primary sources but more would've been welcome. The arts are given a fair shake as well as the philosophers. The dramatic changes in society via Themisticles, Pericles, etc. are understated and it comes across a little lifeless. On the positive side, Martin is clear, generally concise, and great for giving the reader the big picture. It filled in a lot of gaps for me while leaving me disappointed that the glorious moments seemed a little "ho-hum."

My main criticism is that author's personality seems to hide beneath a veneer of objectivity when he could've revealed it by arguing various theses or points of view. This approach usually makes for more interesting reading than the objective approach. I would rather an author take a position and try to be fair to his opponents than be dull and uninteresting by trying to "appear" objective.

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Linkage Here

My friend Jason Carter has posted a Distributist Biblio on his blog Outlines of Sanity. I highly recommend your taking long draughts from this well!

Coercive Commercialism

I've just begun William T. Cavanaugh's book Being Consumed. He observes that Milton Friedman's definition of freedom as the absence of coercion has ironically led to coercive commercialism. It doesn't force anyone to buy, but it does surround and manipulate. "Consumers feel besieged by marketing and surveillance" (1).

The free market promises to make the individual his own god, determining good and evil for himself as a consumer. It promises to liberate man from definitions of right and wrong but it enslaves him to his appetites. It is guided by no definition of human nature and thus no position on what is good or bad for humans. Man is left without a telos or goal of human fulfillment to strive for. In this vacuum, man's will is at the mercy of the marketers. It is not even a battle. The will of the consumer helplessly acquiesces to the relentless onslaught of the marketers.

We need a positive definition of freedom. The classical and Christian view is that freedom is the ability to choose the Good. This means we need a definition of the Good to serve as a guide for human consumption. Where are we going to get that if not from Christianity? Don't we need Christianity to be honored again in the public square? To the extent that we still pay lip service to the common good aren't we living off of borrowed capital? The checks are starting to bounce and we are in trouble. We must return to font of living water as individuals, families, and a society. Lord help us!

Darwinists Admit They Have No Morality

Click on the title of this post to read a review of a new book called Sex at Dawn and some other confessions of what it means to be a consistent Darwinist.

Against Christianity?

Against Christianity by Peter J. Leithart

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Christianity has become the label for the church marginalized by the modern secular state. So Leithart is against Christianity but not the church. Leithart calls the church to repent of its retreat and reassert its culture, language, and influence in the world at large, which includes the state. The church must return from its state imposed exile.

Haven't we tried this before you ask? What about the evils of medieval Christendom? Leithart convincingly argues that the evils of Christendom were inconsistencies, and not a problem intrinsic to that social order. The church and state may cooperate in ruling under God without coercing its people. The church was never meant to rule Christendom but Christendom was supposed to be ruled by a state with "Christian politics."

Leithart agrees that the church's message to the state is countercultural, but he also maintains that this is compatible with a Christian political realm outside the church. Leithart doesn't talk much about the direction of influence between the state and the church, but seems to assume that both are in need of constant reform and renewal by the dynamic of the gospel.

Leithart does appeal to Augustine's city of God. The church is political because it is a polis and ekklesia which commands loyalty greater than any state. The church is a threat to the usurping state. It is the true United Nations. If the state won't respect the spiritual, moral, and theological authority of the church then all the worse for the state. The church is not a part of the polis, it is its own polis, say Leithart (28).

This rings true. Modern liberalism has "cleansed" the public sphere of religion but this hasn't helped us agree or get along. We are more polarized than ever. What modern liberalism has done is take away the basis of persuasion. The Christian conscience has been erased from the public square. Without the ability to make religious arguments, we are at the mercy of our ruling appetites.

Patrick Henry proposed that a non-sectarian Christianity be declared the state religion of Virginia. Jefferson and Madison opposed Henry and this was never tried. What about Massachusetts Bay Colony? Well, I would point out that that was a coercive Christendom which failed because it was too strong where it needed to be permissive to dissenters.

There is a lot more here than a defense of Constantinianism. There is a robust view of the sacraments as an efficacious union of the symbol with the reality. This also works for Leithart as a spearhead against the secularist divorce of the natural and the supernatural. Leithart also highlights ethical transformation as part of the gospel. The gospel seeks to transform the community. "She withdraws from the world for the sake of the world" (135). He points to the work of Rodney Stark who documents the rise of christianity through social transformation in the cities. This led to Christendom and to use the title of one of Stark's books The Victory of Reason.

Leithart's sword cuts through so many layers of secularist armor that it's shocking and refreshing at the same time. Only God can make obligatory. Otherwise everything is permissible and the state wields brute force while the culture festers. The separation of church and state doesn't promote liberty but only slavery to appetite.

Leithart's prescription for change is worship and liturgy. He calls worship is an historical exercise that reenacts redemptive history through word and sacrament. These center us in redemptive history and teach us to "name the world through the Word" just like Adam (72-73).

The church's mission is not to accommodate her language to the existing language, to disguise herself so as to slip in unnoticed and blend in with the existing culture. Her mission is to confront the language of the existing culture with a language of her own (57).

He says that worship is a language course and liturgy is the teacher. Excuse me, I think its time for class.

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Compassion and Conviction

Compassion without conviction breeds license.

The Way We Were

Our seminary curricula are largely identical to what they were around the First World War, but the entering seminarian is a profoundly different person than was the seminarian of the early twentieth century. Then, the individual was well-read in poetry, and had studied nearly a decade of classical language (Latin, Greek, or both), learning by reading poetry and ancient languages to read texts carefully. He had written compositions almost weekly in many of his academic classes, and often wrote letters to friends and family. In contrast, the entering seminarian today has the faculties of a sixth- to eighth grader sixty years ago, and the seminary curriculum cannot make this seminarian an adult by the time he graduates (Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p. 68).

I got this off of Doug Wilson's blog. This was certainly true of me.

The Frontline Against Secularism

In anticipation of Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine, due out in November, I am reading Against Christianity, and it has helped crystalize something for me.

The church's liturgy revels in the union of the natural with the supernatural. It revels in the wedding of word, water, bread, and wine with grace, forgiveness, cleansing, and strengthening.

This is the frontline in the battle against secularism, which marginalizes the supernatural to the private sphere of personal belief. It divorces grace from the natural order of everyday life. It tries to make the things of God off limits to public discussion (90-91).

Does Nature Have Meaning?

Does creation reveal its meaning to us or do we confer meaning onto it?

This is an important question. If we believe that creation is given to us by God and reveals its God-given meaning to our senses and intellect, then we will be more likely to respect it. But if we believe that nature isn't created by God, then it has no God-given quality that we are bound to respect. It is reduced to raw materials that we may manipulate. We can give it any meaning we want.

Now which worldview is more likely to take better care of the earth and use biotechnology for human good?

Grace Before, Mercy After

Before the fall God gave Adam more than he deserved. After the fall he gave him the opposite of what he deserved. Before the fall there was grace, after the fall grace took the form of mercy.

Why Richard Dawkins Needs to Get His Science from iCarly

I was recently watching a rerun of the preteen television show iCarly with my children, and lo and behold Albert Einstein was quoted by Spencer:

The thing that can't be proved is the scientific nature of science itself.

I couldn't believe my ears, and I thought I would have to wander through the rest of my life wondering if I had really heard Einstein quoted on a preteen pop-culture tv show. Then I remembered we had just acquired the modern technological marvel called DVR. So I grabbed the remote from my kids and re-round iCarly. They thought I was going to change the channel. So when my seven year old daughter's cries of protest changed to surprise: "What are you doing dad?" I realized that I actually had heard Spenser quote Einstein.

This just goes to show you the relevance of pop culture to those still stuck in modernity.

I say this because Richard Dawkins, whose stuck in the Enlightenment, obviously needs to get his science from iCarly. This is because he and his friends, like Christopher Hitchens, seem to assume that science does not involve faith. But it is really an act of faith to rely on our sense perceptions.

The scientific method proceeds by observations from our senses, and these are interpreted by our minds. To accept that these are reliable impressions of reality and that our mind interprets them accurately is to assume a lot. It is again an act of faith. This faith is justified, I would argue, if and only if our sense perceptions were designed to interpret reality. Otherwise faith in our sense impressions and our interpretations of them is unfounded. Thus, Dawkin's position is not only based on faith, but on an unfounded faith.

So what if Richard Dawkins was made to sit down and watch a kids show, and all of a sudden he thought he heard Einstein being quoted. Could he "believe" his ears? Yes, but only if they were designed to pick up sound waves, and if his brain was designed to interpret the meaning intended by the source of those sound waves. But this kind of confidence in science would lead to the God of Christianity, and that would be unbelievable, wouldn't it?

A Child's Education

Why is a child's education so important?

Augustine writes:

Virgil certainly is held to be a great poet; in fact he is regarded as the best and the most renowned of all poets, and for that reason he is read by children at an early age--they take great draughts of his poetry into their unformed minds, so that they may not easily forget him, for, as Horace remarks,

New vessels will for long retain the taste

Of what is first poured into them (City of God I.3).

What I Have Written, I Have Written

Quod scripsi, scripsi.