A Thread on John 6

[This is just a copy-paste job from a Twitter thread I wrote the other day.] In John 6, Jesus says, "All the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out," and "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." These verses take high place in a common ar… Read more…

Friday 10/09/2020

Notes

Chesterton and the Half-Christian Critic

I started rereading The Everlasting Man today, and I ran across this passage in the introduction. It's about what was wrong with the Church's critics in Chesterton's culture, and a lot of it is just as applicable to two kinds of Christian critics today, the ex-vangelical especially but also the post-Christians of the W… Read more…

Friday 10/09/2020

Quotes

Mark 1 Notes

[For my Davenant Hall class, "Reading the Gospels with Wisdom," I will be analysing a portion of Mark's Gospel each week. I figured I would also post the notes here.] Mark opens his account by declaring the beginning of the Gospel (ευαγγελιου) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (perhaps, depending on the textual… Read more…

Tuesday 10/06/2020

Notes

Mocha without Warranty

My preferred kind of coffee is a mocha. I make them at home, and over time I think I've settled on a pretty satisfying recipe to my own taste. Here I provide it to the world to advance the common good. Ingredients 2 shots espresso (I make it with about 2/3 cup water) 2 tbsp milk (preferably whole) 2 tbsp half-and-half… Read more…

Saturday 9/12/2020

Uncategorized

The Architecture of Gender

The distinction between sex and gender is one of the first things you will be taught when you seek initiation into the great debates of our culture. It is often simply put that sex is about physical biology and gender about culture. Sex pertains to the physiological realities of male and female, while gender pertains t… Read more…

Friday 9/11/2020

Explainer

To Live For

Yesterday I read an article reporting that 1 in 4 young adults surveyed by the CDC admitted to thoughts of suicide during coronavirus lockdowns. Obviously, this should be the most pressing and discussed of all the news coming out in These Unprecedented Times™, and, even more obviously, it's not even close to being so. … Read more…

Saturday 8/15/2020

General Reflections

Treesuppositionalist Apologetics

Unironically this https://t.co/0EEa7ZMfDJ— ℭ𝔞𝔩𝔢𝔟 𝔖𝔪𝔦𝔱𝔥 (@CalebDixonSmith) August 13, 2020 Let us suppose that trees exist. If we accept this, it tells us a few things. For one, it tells us that our senses are more or less reliable. We know trees by sight and touch and the other senses, so if they do indeed exi… Read more…

Saturday 8/15/2020

Apologetics

Deep Commandments

Most Christians grow up learning, or at least becoming somewhat familiar with, the Ten Commandments. However, often they seem too simple to be a real moral guide as we grow up. I mean, just look at the list: Don't worship other gods. Don't worship images. Don't take God's name in vain. Honor the Sabbath. Honor your pa… Read more…

Monday 8/10/2020

Zoe at Scale: Lewis on a Christian Society

When I finally read all the way through Mere Christianity for the first time last year, I recall being particularly struck by C. S. Lewis' brief description of what he imagines a properly Christian society would look like. It doesn't match the categories used commonly in contemporary American socio-political discourse,… Read more…

Thursday 8/06/2020

Quotes

Praying Past Prayer

Prayer is hard. We don't the half of us pray half as well as we should like, and we like less than half our praying half as well as God deserves. Different people, however, struggle with prayer in different ways. To some, it's the sheer discipline that's so hard: when in my life can or will I sit down and devote some t… Read more…

Wednesday 8/05/2020

Quotes