It’s much too early to declare victory, but Haidt’s book already having real-world effects like this is welcome news.
It’s much too early to declare victory, but Haidt’s book already having real-world effects like this is welcome news.
Sound the alarm: Adam Gopnik is writing about Christianity again. Where is David Bentley Hart when you need him?
Gopnik writes (sneer veiled by smooth prose): “People seek faith, and faith, by its nature, demands the embrace of what reason resists.” Good to know!
The biggest howler: “The humanism [that pagan critics of early Christianity] championed was always plural—there are many plausible ways to live. But, in its refusal of certainty, their humanism also produced enormous anxiety, and anxiety is always drawn toward the reassurance of authority.”
I don’t mind Gopnik’s views, which are a dime a dozen, whether in the world of elite journalism or in the academy. I mind the omniscient tone and Olympian perspective that cannot condescend to read, much less to mention, a single dissenting view. Why not engage other scholars than these? Why rehearse the same old liberal Protestant pieties? Why give credence to a single Jesus-never-existed writer and YouTuber but not one glance at the serious, sizable, substantial body of research disagreeing with everyone cited in the story?
But I’m glad to know it’s only the religious who demand embrace of what reason resists.
This wise reflection on “accountability” and male friendship in churches by Samuel D. James has me thinking about what I call the “ten-minute rule.”
The rule is simple. It states that, in any church event organized and advertised by and for adult men, you can set you clock for overt mention of porn: i.e., no later than ten minutes in, the issue of pornography will surface, usually with a sigh followed by a story, always with a brusque declaration that “we’ve got to talk about this,” and never without liberal deployment of the word “accountability.”
I’m not denigrating the good intentions behind these events, but this exceptionless pattern is why I avoid such events like the plague.
The always excellent Matthew Walther asks, “What is a parish?" He answers his own question then offers an alternative.
A wonderful reflection on the Psalms in Hebrews, together with lessons for Christian reading of the Psalms, from Alastair Roberts.
Was happy to endorse this new book due out next month. Recommended for anyone but especially for college students. A beautiful and insightful read.
Between lectures I looked at some of the theological books on sale in the hall. Most seemed to me totally incomprehensible. Obviously doctrinally and philosophically they would be well above my understanding, but it seemed that the sentences themselves were incomprehensible, a string of polysyllabic words strung together from which I could get no meaning. Theology like other professions has its own obscurantism. The problem is surely that theology should impinge on the lives of ordinary non-theologians if it is to have influence. Surely it can sometimes be written in language the intelligent lay man or woman can understand.
—P. D. James, Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography (1999), p. 175
This is a conversation well worth reading. The NYT should put them in these four-person group chats more often.
TIL about “artwork personalization” at Netflix. Evil geniuses.
Steven D. Greydanus offers a cinematic analysis of one of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips—a copy is hanging over my desk at home—and it makes for a truly wonderful read. And I learned some things about cinematography while I was at it!
Read Peter Hitchens on baptism and exorcism: “What if all this stuff is true?”
Some wonderful writing on AI/LLMs:
•Paul Griffiths, “Ghosts and Dolls” (in The Lamp)
•Charles Carman, “One to Zero” (in The New Atlantis)
•Nikolas Prassas, “Large Language Poetry” (in First Things)
Also “AI and the Unhappy Society” by James Hankins in First Things. And finally an older one: Richard Hughes Gibson, “Language Machinery," in The Hedgehog Review.
This morning in CT I wrote about the sacrament of baptism: what it is, what it does, and the many gifts it imparts.
Most of the Marvel TV shows have been very, very bad; some have been middling to mildly entertaining; only two, by my count, could be called “good”: Loki and WandaVision. So I’m not surprised that Sepinwall ranked the latter first in his top-twenty rankings, but definitely surprised by the former ranking fifth. I’d probably put it on top.
Mostly, though, this list just brings home how much time I’ve wasted on these shows; it strengthens my resolve to avoid watching any more.
In Modern Theology Jennifer Herdt reviews Oliver O’Donovan’s Gifford lectures, titled The Disappearance of Ethics. From the final paragraph:
What [O’Donovan] ends up advancing in the present book is not so much the claim that Ethics is a bearer of good news as that theology brings good news to an Ethics in danger of disappearing. The linkage between the projects is nevertheless strong. Barth opposed natural theology because he held that theology should never allow other disciplines to set the terms of inquiry; the autonomy of theology flowed from proper recognition of divine sovereignty. Yet a supreme confidence in divine sovereignty goes further, in declaring the autonomy of other disciplines merely apparent: while there may be ethical stances, say, that take themselves to be independent of what God has done in Christ, this autonomy is an illusion—in fact, all creation reflects this Christological reality. I myself have argued that only this latter, comprehensive, form of Christian particularism is finally coherent; an exclusive particularism that seeks to remain wholly within first-order Christian categories founders on the fact that core theological concepts are not exclusively Christian even where they have become distinctively Christian—think of terms such as “scripture,” “liturgy,” “ecclesia,” “worship,” “God,” and even “Christ” (the anointed one). O’Donovan is right to grasp that this insight re-opens the door to natural theology. He does not allow other disciplines to set the terms of inquiry. And the natural theology that he has given us in this book will challenge and inspire for years to come. The Disappearance of Ethics—the book, that is, not the travails of the discipline—is good news indeed.
For this economic illiterate, reading Caldwell on tariffs was instructive.
My brother Mitch writes about the burial of Sarah.
Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water (1980)
My oldest son, from the backseat:
“Dad, I never really want to watch Episode VIII, but when I do, I realize just how much I love it. It’s so awesome. It’s one of my favorite Star Wars movies.”
Read John Byron Kuhner on Tolkien’s (thankfully failed) attempt to wreck the charm of The Hobbit through 1960 revisions to the original.