By JP Moreland
Scriptorium Daily
The first slogan assumes that ownership of something justifies a right to use it as one wishes with, of course, certain limitations (I can’t drive my car through your living room window). For centuries, in Western ethics and law, ownership has justified use because ownership was obtained by one’s mixing one’s labor to gain that ownership. If one works to make something or to earn the money to purchase it, then one has the right of ownership over that thing. Now, if a Creator-God exists, none of us, including women, own our bodies in the sense relevant to right of use. God does. Since he made it, he owns it. Now renters have certain rights delegated to them by owners, but they do not have owner-rights just because they rent or use something. The same goes with our bodies. Just because we “rent” or use them, that does not give us the right of ownership. God has that right. If God does not exist, then there is no such owner. So the slogan is empty since it masks the real, fundamental issue: Is there a God who has ownership over our bodies, has he declared anything relevant to what renters can do regarding abortion, and how does one know the correct answers to these questions? This is where the debate should reside, not over misleading slogans about owning one’s body. (more)
Monday, April 30, 2007
On Picking a College: Biola over Berkeley?
By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily
I believe education is training to live virtuously. A good man can learn skills at any time . . . but intense mentoring to virtue is not going to happen accidentally at any stage of your life in this culture.
...
Scriptorium Daily
I believe education is training to live virtuously. A good man can learn skills at any time . . . but intense mentoring to virtue is not going to happen accidentally at any stage of your life in this culture.
...
If you could be mentored by Peter (a fisherman) or Plato (the philosopher) which man would you pick?
At your age, I would have picked Plato . . . now I see that ignorance of God is a fundamental flaw that should be avoided at all costs. There is no real, systematic education in virtue possible without God. God gives a common grace to all persons (and so we can learn from anyone), but if one can, better to choose a role model who knows Him directly.
Peter (whatever his faults) saw God-in-flesh, was empowered by the Holy Spirit, and would have done more to stimulate my intellect than Plato. (And heaven knows I love Plato . . . )
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In Torrey you will read both Plato and Peter carefully with professors empowered by the Spirit of God (God help us) . . . the same Spirit that filled Peter. We will always strive to see Plato through Peter (or Paul or John or Moses . . . ) not Peter through Plato. (more)
Friday, April 20, 2007
Here Lies the Nation
By Anthony Esolen
Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments
...the nation may be going the same way that medieval Christendom went. I agree, and I'm not talking about the power of multinational corporations-- and neither was he. I mean that the virtue of patriotism, which is linked to a sense of belonging to this land, here, and loving it, a virtue that did not begin with the nation-state but could at least survive in it, is fading away. A man calls himself a doctor or a lawyer, a golfer, a husband and father, a collector of postcards, even a Methodist, before he calls himself an American. I have an old Army-Navy hymnal at home, and to look through it is to be astonished by the number and variety and quaint eloquence of its patriotic anthems, most of them now long forgotten. Even our most common patriotic hymns have been reduced, in the lived experience and memories of citizens, to a single verse, usually only dimly understood. Lines such as these from the hymn that used to be called simply America are almost incomprehensible now, not semantically but affectively, and would certainly never be written:
Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments
...the nation may be going the same way that medieval Christendom went. I agree, and I'm not talking about the power of multinational corporations-- and neither was he. I mean that the virtue of patriotism, which is linked to a sense of belonging to this land, here, and loving it, a virtue that did not begin with the nation-state but could at least survive in it, is fading away. A man calls himself a doctor or a lawyer, a golfer, a husband and father, a collector of postcards, even a Methodist, before he calls himself an American. I have an old Army-Navy hymnal at home, and to look through it is to be astonished by the number and variety and quaint eloquence of its patriotic anthems, most of them now long forgotten. Even our most common patriotic hymns have been reduced, in the lived experience and memories of citizens, to a single verse, usually only dimly understood. Lines such as these from the hymn that used to be called simply America are almost incomprehensible now, not semantically but affectively, and would certainly never be written:
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture fills
Like that above. (more)
Real Beauty and Desire: Charity and Modesty in an Erotic World
By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily
The educated man who understands beauty and the different manifestations of it can develop appropriate desires. He can learn that this jewelry is beautiful, but beautiful in a way that should provoke an appropriate response. His thinking it is beautiful is not wrong; he is just misapprehending it as the sort of beauty that he should own.
...
In my own life, I realized that I was hostile to considering objective beauty because I feared it would lead to the forced wearing of Mormon prom dresses by my date, would mandate listening to ugly but wholesome Christian music, and uplifting but hideous art. After discussing it, I realized that the eye-rolling college students thought that “objective beauty” was just a philosopher’s way of getting ready to talk about modesty or bad ideas in their music! (more)
Scriptorium Daily
The educated man who understands beauty and the different manifestations of it can develop appropriate desires. He can learn that this jewelry is beautiful, but beautiful in a way that should provoke an appropriate response. His thinking it is beautiful is not wrong; he is just misapprehending it as the sort of beauty that he should own.
...
If an inappropriate desire is caused by subjective beauty, then people’s opinions about what is beautiful are part of the “problem.” Society tries to control certain unacceptable manifestations of desire, but the desire will keep coming back because the beauty that provokes it is really there. Ignorance of the nature of beauty and how to handle it will undercut any attempt to deal with it well.
Instead of learning about beauty, we learn about avoiding personal behaviors that can give offense. Beauty, if it is objective, never changes from culture to culture, but what gives offense (even gross offense) can change from day to day or person to person! This ends in terrifying legalism not liberty since there is no “real standard” to impose.
Aesthetic discussions regarding clothing are an example of where things have gone wrong. Instead of beauty, the focus weirdly becomes modesty . . . keeping people from “stumbling” as a result of attire.
In my own life, I realized that I was hostile to considering objective beauty because I feared it would lead to the forced wearing of Mormon prom dresses by my date, would mandate listening to ugly but wholesome Christian music, and uplifting but hideous art. After discussing it, I realized that the eye-rolling college students thought that “objective beauty” was just a philosopher’s way of getting ready to talk about modesty or bad ideas in their music! (more)
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Council of Chalcedon
By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily
Chalcedon was a fifth-century council, and theologians in the fifth century wrestled with a particular set of problems. Just as the fourth-century saw two opposite errors (Arianism which could not confess the deity of Christ, and an Apollinarianism which could not confess his humanity), the fifth-century saw both a Nestorianism which could not confess the hypostatic union of the two natures, to and a Eutychian Monophysitism which could not confess their distinction. Eutychian Monophysites certainly knew that divinity and humanity were not the same thing. But their dread of Nestorianism in any form led them to view the result of the incarnation as the mixing of the two natures into a new nature which the incarnate Christ had: a nature both divine and human. The Eutychians who were the subject of Chalcedon’s anathemas believed themselves to be loyal adherents of Cyril of Alexandria’s theology, but they are best viewed as pushing the Cyrillian insight to a drastic extreme. Against this error, the fathers of Chalcedon anathematized “those who imagine a mixture or confusion of the two natures of Christ” and also “those who, first idly talk of the natures of the Lord as ‘two before the union’ and then conceive but one ‘after the union.’” (more)
Scriptorium Daily
Chalcedon was a fifth-century council, and theologians in the fifth century wrestled with a particular set of problems. Just as the fourth-century saw two opposite errors (Arianism which could not confess the deity of Christ, and an Apollinarianism which could not confess his humanity), the fifth-century saw both a Nestorianism which could not confess the hypostatic union of the two natures, to and a Eutychian Monophysitism which could not confess their distinction. Eutychian Monophysites certainly knew that divinity and humanity were not the same thing. But their dread of Nestorianism in any form led them to view the result of the incarnation as the mixing of the two natures into a new nature which the incarnate Christ had: a nature both divine and human. The Eutychians who were the subject of Chalcedon’s anathemas believed themselves to be loyal adherents of Cyril of Alexandria’s theology, but they are best viewed as pushing the Cyrillian insight to a drastic extreme. Against this error, the fathers of Chalcedon anathematized “those who imagine a mixture or confusion of the two natures of Christ” and also “those who, first idly talk of the natures of the Lord as ‘two before the union’ and then conceive but one ‘after the union.’” (more)
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Is the Desire to Avoid Hell Egotistical? (Part I)
By J. P. Moreland
Scriptorium Daily
Recently the topic of Hell has been in the news. In case you were entirely unaware, yes, Hell is in fact a real place (as Pope Benedict reminded us just last week). Hell, being an altogether unpleasant place, is not a destination where many desire to go, but is this desire to avoid Hell egotistical? JP Moreland reflects on this question: (more)
Scriptorium Daily
Recently the topic of Hell has been in the news. In case you were entirely unaware, yes, Hell is in fact a real place (as Pope Benedict reminded us just last week). Hell, being an altogether unpleasant place, is not a destination where many desire to go, but is this desire to avoid Hell egotistical? JP Moreland reflects on this question: (more)
The Women of Holy Week: She Annointed Jesus and Created Beauty
By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily
We don’t even know her identity for sure. Some Christians in the West believe that she was Mary Magdalene, but Christians in the East simply call her Mary of Bethany.
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Is it possible that God tells some people (men as well as women) who are sensitive when to act through reasons not known to what men call reason? Perhaps. I do know that I have learned to listen to mothers, to artists, to people who act beautifully and do not just think beautifully.
...
Puritanical types draw back from the sheer physicality Mary’s act. Such folk want their religion with theoretical, not real, tears on the inside which hit no pillow, love expressed only in greeting cards and not in the hug of an actual greeting.
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I often think of this when I see mothers pouring out their lives in unpaid service to their churches or families. Nobody likes the “Church Lady” anymore except to mock her, but she has a model in Mary of Bethany.
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Mary of Bethany made a symbol real . . . and pictured what was to come by her mental act made physical. (more)
Scriptorium Daily
We don’t even know her identity for sure. Some Christians in the West believe that she was Mary Magdalene, but Christians in the East simply call her Mary of Bethany.
...
Is it possible that God tells some people (men as well as women) who are sensitive when to act through reasons not known to what men call reason? Perhaps. I do know that I have learned to listen to mothers, to artists, to people who act beautifully and do not just think beautifully.
...
Puritanical types draw back from the sheer physicality Mary’s act. Such folk want their religion with theoretical, not real, tears on the inside which hit no pillow, love expressed only in greeting cards and not in the hug of an actual greeting.
...
I often think of this when I see mothers pouring out their lives in unpaid service to their churches or families. Nobody likes the “Church Lady” anymore except to mock her, but she has a model in Mary of Bethany.
...
Mary of Bethany made a symbol real . . . and pictured what was to come by her mental act made physical. (more)
The Trouble With Islam
By Tawfik Hamid
OpinionJournal, WSJ
These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.
...
Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last few decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. (more)
OpinionJournal, WSJ
These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.
...
Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last few decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. (more)
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