Author: Scriptorium Admin
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Definition: Disjectamembra
See the other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The Roman poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BC) once said that a true poem would still be poetical even if you rearranged all the words in it. Or perhaps what he said was that a good poet would still be poetical…
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Church Rides at Disneyland
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Disneyland Rides by Religious Tradition In order to lighten the national mood, or do my part in it, I have decided to do some research on which Disneyland rides should be favored by various Christian religious groups. Following hours of field study and reading, the following list is correct to the…
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God in a Natural Disaster
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Is a Natural Disaster a Sign of God’s Judgment? This Sunday should the pastors of America thunder out a call for repentance based on the hurricane? If a television evangelist says that the hurricane is “God’s judgment” on somebody, is automatically he wrong to do so? What does a great natural…
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Where is God?
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. As is usual at such a time, philosophers get asked, “Where is God?” during the hurricane. Of course most people asking these questions are hurting. Seemingly random and terrible things have happened to them and they want to know why. They are not usually looking for philosophy. My comments are not…
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Duty and Love
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Michael was the younger son. His brother was given the family business since that was the way things were done. The oldest would run the firm while the rest were to contribute. In the early twentieth-century that was already a very old-fashioned notion, but Michael benefited in terms of prestige and…
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Tolkien and Plato
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the great Christian neo-Platonists of the twentieth century. With C.S. Lewis and A.E. Taylor, Tolkien was part of a revival of this traditional Christian synthesis with the work of the great Athenian. Tolkien’s works in the realm of imagination helped create an entire genre of literature,…
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Anybody out there interested?
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Does any publisher out there want a book? Does anyone want to read the rest of this story? Chapter One: Messages Wind. Blowing, tearing wind was the main memory he had of the Dream. He called it the Dream, because it came so often and was almost always the same. It…
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Education and the Problem of Our Times
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. What is love? What is true education? One of the great masters of both, Socrates, gave us a lesson in the dialogue Symposium that is powerful. Socrates ends his discussion of Love on a high note. He says of Diotima’s speech, This . . . was what Diotima told me. I…
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He is Risen!
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Every day the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. For those of Western European ancestry, like myself, it is to the East that we owe the coming of the True Light: Jesus Christ. From the East came Peter, prince of the Apostles. From the East came the…
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Stripping the Altar
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. For Eastern Christians today is Good Friday. Last night we recollected Christ’s gift of Holy Communion to the Church. At the end of that most beautiful of services in the light of candles the altar was stripped. Every decoration was removed. Every sign of honor was taken from it.It is a…
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Nearer My God to Thee
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Tonight almost a century ago the RMS Titanic sank. Thousands of people lost their lives in a disaster that came to symbolize the death of the false optimism that had marked the start of the century. Liberalism in 1900 felt it had at last escaped the chains of fundamentalism. Christianity would…
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Getting Free
John Mark Reynolds, 2005. Last summer our dog, Aristotle, died. It had been my fourteen year old son’s boyhood companion. I can close my eyes and see L.D. being dragged around the block by a young Aristotle. The dog was bigger than the boy! One day, and it happened all at once, he was much…