Category: Misc.

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be blogging a series on the virtues and vices. This installment will consider gluttony and contentment. For my understanding of the terms “virtue” and “vice” see my previous post “On Sloth and Vigilance.” A standard dictionary defines a glutton as “a person who eats far too…

An insight on the role of the Trinity in evangelism, from John Teter’s book Get the Word Out. Teter devotes the final three chapters to showing that “God is not distant in any dimension of our evangelism experience. He goes before us, he is behind us and he is even inside of us. We are…

This is the first in a series of postings I am planning on the virtues and vices. Definitions are in order. A good biblical definition of virtue is found in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent…

A colleague tipped me off to this howler at the New York Times. Under a picture of a crowd at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Times prints the caption: Worshipers at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Jesus is traditionally believed to be buried. But a new documentary says he might have…

One good thing I can say about James Cameron’s Lost Tomb of Jesus media blitz: It pays Christianity a great compliment by accepting the religion’s claim to be about something real. The basic idea motivating Cameron’s project is that if somebody finds the body of Jesus Christ, the whole Christian thing is over, finished, based…

No, seriously! I was just walking through this graveyard near Los Angeles, and I look up, and there it was: Clear as day, “Jesús” written right on a grave stone. And as if that’s not enough to let you know that I of all people have found the very grave of Jesus himself, look at…

Well, we’re a week into Lent and I have already failed at my chosen Lenten discipline — to blog regularly. You see, since becoming an official Middlebrow blogger last August I have managed to post a whopping four or five blogs. My colleagues on this blog can reach that total in a week (or less)!…

In 1644 John Milton of Paradise Lost fame published an eight page pamphlet entitled “Of Education.” In it he stated: The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him,…

There is one place in scripture where the sheer greatness of the gospel is most profusely described: the blessing with which Paul opens the epistle to the Ephesians. Paul begins by praising God for the gift of the gospel, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with…

I was reading a book once in which the author, having made a great theological point, went on to say “we would do well to note this and remember it.” Now this was a famously feisty Swiss author, given to using exclamation points and double dashes throughout his prose. So “note this and remember it”…

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) admits in his Practical View that his definition of religion runs pretty close to what most people would call a definition of fanaticism (or, in 18th-century terminology, enthusiasm). He calls religion the implantation of a vigorous and active principle; it is seated in the heart, where its authority is recognized as supreme,…

The William Wilberforce movie is coming out, and I hear it’s pretty good. Here’s hoping the movie is at least good enough to get William Wilberforce back in the public eye. Wilberforce is justly famous as a man of action, and his legislative victories in the cause of justice are the thing we should never…