Category: Blog
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Alexander Cruden, Not Quite Correct
Alexander Cruden was born this day (May 31, 1700) and made his mark in history by producing a concordance of the Bible. Cruden’s Concordance was a revolutionary research tool in its day, as attested by the great excitement with which Jonathan Edwards ordered a copy and put it to use in his own studies. Though…
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The Barmen Declaration
May 30 is the best day to commemorate the Theological Declaration of Barmen, the document in which the Confessing Church in Germany in 1934 drew the line against the steadily-advancing incursions of Nazi ideology into the life of the church. Karl Barth was the primary author of most of the text of the short confession…
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3 from GKC
On the birthday of G. K. Chesterton (May 29, 1874), here are my three favorites from among his many poems. One for the not yet born, one for those of us making our ways through the everyday, and one for the very old. By The Babe Unborn If trees were tall and grasses short, As…
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Calvin Died
John Calvin (born 1509, died this day, May 27, in 1564) didn’t want to be a celebrity. He even tried his best to avoid taking a leading role in the second generation of the Reformation. When his death was approaching, he arranged to have himself buried in an unmarked grave to make sure nobody would…
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California Literary Regionalism?
What is California literature? For a class about California in the great books tradition, I had to pick a half-dozen of the best books for students to read and discuss. Which raises the question, what counts as California literature? The most helpful discussion I’ve read on the subject is not exactly up to date, but…
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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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How to Study One Book of the Bible
The first method of Bible study that we shall consider is the study of the Bible by individual books. This method of study is the most thorough, the most difficult, and the one that yields the largest and most permanent results. We take it up first because in the author’s opinion it should occupy the…
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Let’s Get Classical: Reynolds’ New Book on Greek Thought
This is an occasion for celebration for anybody connected to the Torrey Honors Institute: John Mark Reynolds has published his long-awaited introduction to Greek thought for Christians. When Athens Met Jerusalem is now available from InterVarsity Press. As J. Budziszewski says on the back cover of the book, for anybody who suspects that “it must…
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John R. Mott
John Raleigh Mott was born today (May 25) in 1865 and died in 1955. Mott had a motto: The Evangelization of the World in This Generation. The motto was controversial, and sounded far too optimistic and imperial to its critics. But as Mott patiently explained in numerous books and countless conference talks, he meant for…
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John Wesley at Aldersgate
May 24 is the day in 1738 that John Wesley heard Scripture explained in a way that caused him to feel his heart “strangely warmed,” and knew himself to be a child of God. He was in a church service at Aldersgate, listening to somebody reading aloud from Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans. And it…
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Tantalus and the Pelican
I just finished reading Nicholas Buxton’s Tantalus and the Pelican: Exploring Monastic Spirituality Today. It is definitely a very interesting book. A mix between theology, biography and history, the book is mostly dedicated to an examination of themes from early Christian (and occasionally Buddhist) monasticism applied by the author to his own reflections on the…
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William R. Newell on Paul’s Letters
William R. Newell was born on this day, May 22, in 1868. He pastored a church in Chicago until Dwight Moody invited him to assist R. A. Torrey in supervising the great Bible Institute (later to be named after Moody). Newell wrote the hymn “At Calvary” (“Mercy there was great and grace was free…”) and…