Kobe’s funeral takes place on same day that The Bachelor is the number one trending topic on Twitter!
YOU KNOW FAME IS FLEETING WHEN…
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Stuck in the Present
ME AND TRUMP
HT: To Roger Berry for the picture. I am writing a book with Professor Michael Haykin on Ralph Waldo Emerson. It seems the president likes Emerson. I don’t think it is quite accurate to say, “I love Emerson,” but he has been a very productive conversation partner.
And now to the matter of this post…
Some of you know about my critical piece on Trump which was cited favorably on the Gospel Coalition and elsewhere. I still stand by everything I wrote. Here it is:
IS VOTING FOR TRUMP A “MORALLY GOOD CHOICE”? RESPONDING TO WAYNE GRUDEM
I did not vote during the 2016 election when it comes to president. For everyone else, I cast a vote. And I still stand by that decision. And yes, I think it was my patriotic duty to not vote.
But things can change…
I regularly preach (really I teach it) that true education is many things, but one thing for sure: painful. The ancient Greeks had a name for it: mathein pathein. “To learn is to suffer.” If you are truly learning, you have to face deficient views/ideas you previously believed.
Do I think my previous thoughts on Trump deficient? Largely, I do not, especially because I was addressing some specific areas of concern and those have not changed.
And yet, I want to remain open to new dynamics.
I’m still not sure what I will do in the upcoming election, but this is the best piece that is causing me to consider Trump:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/2020-election-religious-conservatives-trump-voters/
POUR, PRAYER OVER WORD OF GOD!
Wonderful, prophetic word:
WHAT A BOOK!
I read a lot of history. Usually, I have to read long books (400 pages plus) to get as much insight as this much shorter one by Gregg. In only 166 pages the author gives intellectual insights on every page. It is a feast for both heart and mind.
The writing is clear and compelling. Gregg knows the flow of Western ideas very well. He communicates with ease some of the main currents of thought.
It is rare that the number of my markings (or marginalia) exceeds the number of the pages of a book I have read, but this is one of those rare times.
I highly recommend this balanced and beautifully conceived book!
RUN TO YOUR BOOKSTORE!
Even easier you can order this magnificent work online!
I have read and reread Rutledge’s big book on the crucifixion. I made nearly 600 notes in the margin during the first read and another 300 plus during the second read. I interviewed Fleming Rutledge in 2018. It is a brilliant and beautiful book, but Advent is now my favorite.
Advent is more accessible than The Crucifixion of Jesus because it is a collection of sermons. Don’t let that fool you. These are meaty sermons with Rutledge’s trademark goodies in the footnotes.
There are some places I may disagree with the author, but I enthusiastically recommend Advent!
SEEKING FAME?
EMERSON’S PROTEGES
I am writing my own book that will feature Emerson and another well-known American thinker, so I am in the midst of much research.
This book crossed my radar and I am glad it did.
There are brilliant insights throughout as attested by my marginalia.
If you are interested in Emerson, and especially how he interacted with his “disciples,” this is a great read.
ONE OF THE BEST SERMONS I’VE EVER HEARD
MUCH FOOD FOR THOUGHT!
Apologies for the script below, but what insight! HT: Alan Jacobs
The loss of Roger Scruton, who recently died at the age of 75, is a grievous one for us all, whether we know it or not. Outside of conservative circles, Scruton is known mainly for his critiques, but critique wasn’t what he excelled at. His special gift was for celebration and praise. My friend and colleague David Corey pointed me to Scruton’s late book on Wagner’s Ring tetralogy, which I have devoured over the past few days. Scruton loved Wagner and was indeed something of a philosophical Wagnerian, and in this book he makes an extraordinarily eloquent case for Wagner’s account of human psychology and society. I don’t accept the case, but I admire the cogency with which Scruton makes it. Along the way he offers us many set-pieces on a wide range of subjects. Here’s one:
Erotic love, in its true inter-personal form, does not belong in the world of contracts and deals. Its foundation is not a contract but a vow. Contracts have terms, and when the terms are fulfilled they are at an end. Vows do not have terms, and cannot be undone by any calculation. The unity created by them is, as Hegel put it (in his discussion of marriage), a ‘substantial unity’: not a unity of purpose or place or pleasure but a unity of being. Lovers dedicate themselves to each other, and it is in part for this reason that they are so much at risk: to place a commission in another’s hands is to risk something; to place yourself in another’s hands is to risk everything. […]
In the world that we know today sex is widely viewed as a commodity, and the act of love as a ‘transaction’ involving pleasure in the sexual parts – a matter of desire and satisfaction, rather than existential commitment. We find this view already in Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality, and shaped as orthodoxy in the writings of Alfred Kinsey. It is embodied in a certain kind of sex-education, which seeks to relieve young people of the burden of shame and guilt, and to open the path to pleasure. If this view of sex were correct then the outrage of rape would be impossible to explain. Rape would be just as bad as being spat upon: but hardly worse. The fact that, in almost all criminal codes, rape is next to murder in the hierarchy of offences, would be a mystery, a hangover from superstitions that humanity is on the way to discarding. And the trivializing of rape is what we find in a world where women are seen as instruments of pleasure, sexual ‘objects’ from which the subjective essence has been wiped away.