Category: Misc.
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Who Said “The Trinity: Try to Understand It, and You’ll Lose Your Mind”?
Read Fred Sanders’s follow-up here. Here is a saying that you run into frequently in popular books on the Trinity: The Trinity: Try to Understand It and You’ll Lose Your Mind. Try to Deny It and You’ll LOSE YOUR SOUL! This aphorism is usually introduced with the vague reference, “As somebody has said…” In fact,…
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Freshman Follies (How to Avoid Them)
As I look with resignation at my incomplete and overly optimistic list of “Things to Accomplish This Summer,” I am coming to grips with the summer being almost at the end, and that means I am about to become the mentor/advisor to a group of wide-eyed freshmen honors students. I have been teaching college students…
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Vincent van Gogh: More Blue than Yellow
Today (July 29) is the day in 1890 when Vincent van Gogh died from a gunshot wound he had inflicted on himself two days earlier, leaving behind many questions. That van Gogh was mentally tormented throughout his life is widely known. It is an unavoidable subject for biographers, but also an irresistible subject for anybody…
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The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus
Once upon a time, the cruel emperor Decius came to the city of Ephesus to build new temples at which all citizens, but especially the Christians, would be required to worship him by sacrifices, or else die. Now in this city lived seven Christian men named Maximian, Malchus, Marcian, Dionysius, John, Serapion, and Constantine. When…
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Helpful New Series from InterVarsity Press
For those familiar with the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS), you’ll know how helpful of a tool it can be when studying a passage of Scripture. The good news is that the publisher of the ACCS, InterVarsity Press, has recently launched two new series: Ancient Christian Doctrine and Ancient Christian Texts. The former will…
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DECLARE
It seems appropriate on July 4th Weekend to take a look at the document that resulted in a holiday filled with fireworks, pool parties, and barbecues that citizens of the United States have come to know and love. When I was growing up, Independence Day was one of the few times that my family would…
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How My Dad Built an Illegal Bridge, and It Was Good
This Father’s Day, I’m remembering something my dad did back in the summer of 1991. He illegally repaired a county bridge and became a local hero. For his neighbors in Missouri, it became the story of a determined small businessman beating city hall with a bulldozer and a few tons of gravel. Dad owned a…
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Julia Morgan’s Delta Zeta House in Berkeley
“We make our buildings, and then our buildings make us,” Winston Churchill once said, pointing out how important architecture is. Less grandiosely, we could say that buildings influence their inhabitants in many subtle ways. Most people notice architecture’s mind-altering powers only if they live in especially bad buildings or especially good ones. A cramped room…
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To the Johnson House Class of 2009, Thanks
Four years ago this fall the Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University implemented a curriculum of the great literary classics that was thematic in its approach as opposed to being a chronological reading of the texts. My job as professor in Torrey was the result of the creation of this new “house,” named after the…
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Nothing Happened in April
Actually, lots of interesting anniversaries are coming up in the next couple of weeks: Brainerd was born, Moody was converted, Kant was born, William Miller’s predicted date for Christ’s return came and went, Augustine was baptized, Charles Fuller was born, Luther had his disputation at Heidelberg, and Peter Bohler died. But I’m not going to…
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Playmobil Creator Hans Beck Dies
The weekend news carried the report of the death of Hans Beck, the man behind the Playmobil toys. Born May 6, 1929, Beck died on January 30, 2009. Left to my own lights, I would be a lifelong Lego nerd. But my kids have very clearly expressed a greater love of Playmobil. Hans Beck said…
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Today is Felix Mendelssohn’s Birthday
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was a musical wunderkind, a prodigy who was performing by age 9, composing symphonies by age 12, and publishing works by age 13. He was largely responsible for the revival of interest in Bach after decades of neglect, because it was his conducting the St. Matthew Passion that helped place that composition…