Resident Theologian
About the Blog
My latest: why Christians are conspiracy theorists, in CT
A link to my latest column in Christianity Today.
Aping the Inklings
A plea—to myself first, then to others—to stop centering the Inklings and other “modern classics” as the north star for popular Christian writing today.
Young Christians (not) reading, 2
Further reflections on young Christians today and their reading habits (or rather, lack thereof).
Turning back the clock
In the last six weeks I’ve read three different books that all makes disparaging reference to “turning back the clock.” By disparaging I mean that they repudiate the usual use to which the cliché is put. Noticing the shared rhetorical move between these works, spread across about four decades in the first half of the twentieth century, made me wonder how common a trope this is for Christian and especially conservative writers in the last hundred or so years. Do share if you know some other ones.
Euphemism
Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females"; say this to them and they will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them "Murder your mother," and they sit up quite suddenly.
Enns and eggs and common sense
. . . not only the practical politics, but the abstract philosophies of the modern world have had this queer twist [of being contrary to common sense]. Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody's system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody's sense of reality: to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense. Each started with a paradox: a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of what they would call a sane point of view. That is the one thing common to Hobbes and Hegel, to Kant and Bergson, to Berkeley and William James.