Month: January 2011

Life in Christ

Christ reigns by unfolding Himself in men

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Monday, January 31st, 2011: A. G. Sertillanges, from his venerable book The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods: Christianized humanity is made up of various personalities, no one of which can refuse to function without impoverishing the group and without depriving the eternal Christ of a part of his Kingdom. Christ reigns by unfolding Himself in men. Every life of one of His members is a characteristic moment of His duration; every individual man and Christian is an instance, incommunicable, unique, and therefore nece...

Bible Study Tools

Updated WORDsearch Tweaks

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

From the better-late-than-never department, I’ve updated my Overview of WORDsearch Bible Study software to account for version 9. I’ve also updated the customizations under the Tweaks tab: more color schemes, more Internet dictionary resources, and a minor re-work of my Bible Search Range Defaults file that works better with the new indexer engine in WS9. This can all be found here.

Life in Christ

We have children because love overflows

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Sunday, January 30th, 2011: Timothy Dalrymple, writing at Patheos.com, on Why We Have Children: At the thought of fathering a daughter, waves of joy rolled through me. I loved my little girl long before I met her. I read her stories in the womb, sang to her, prayed for her. It wouldn’t matter what she looked like or what her personality was. She was mine—mine to nurture and protect, mine to train and guide, and mine to love with all my might. We have children because love overflows. I believe as a Christian that I am created in...

Critical Issues

Privatizing Prisons?

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Jazz Shaw has a troubling post on the blog over at HotAir.com, dealing with a recent suggestion from Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner to freeze new prison construction funding in PA. As the Entitlements Chicken comes home to roost, states are likely to begin looking at their corrections systems for ways to save. Nothing wrong with that in theory, but I have a hard time seeing how the typical alignment of political squabbling will produce a good path forward. To wit, Shaw’s two-cent’s worth on available options: Wagner is excluding the ranks of mu...

Culture & Philosophy

Modernity is simply the time of realized nihilism

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Friday, January 28th, 2011: David Bentley Hart, from the just released February 2011 volume of First Things, discussing Martin Heidegger’s reading of the centrality of nihilism in Western civilization’s cultural history and its philosophical tradition, in an article that appears to be available to non-subscribers on the website: Modernity, for Heidegger, is simply the time of realized nihilism, the age in which the will to power has become the ground of all our values; as a consequence it is all but impossible for humanity to dwell i...

Politics & Economics

An attack on the poor, who have been most helped by capitalism

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Thursday, January 27th, 2011: Robert T. Miller, in February’s First Things, criticizing the continuing latent Marxism in the political economy of Alasdair MacIntyre’s thought, in an article entitled Waiting for St. Vladimir: Capitalism efficiently delivers goods and services, but it is not a perfect system—far from it. To be sure, capitalism has costs of various kinds. It is a key insight of modern economics, however, that all solutions to a given problem have costs, and we delude ourselves if we think we can find a perfect (in the s...

Critical Issues

People cannot claim a right to kill you simply because they will not recognize you as a person

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Wednesday, January 26th, 2011: Joe Carter, writing an “On the Square” column over at FirstThings.com, on Being a Person: But should all human beings be considered persons? Historically, the answer has been a resounding “no.” Slaves, women, infants, Jews, and “foreigners” all share a common history of being denied legal or moral standing as persons, despite being recognized as humans. The judgment of recent generations, however, has without exception concluded that denying personhood to these members of the human family is a great mor...

Critical Issues

There can be no lasting prosperity without a moral foundation in law

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Monday, January 24th, 2011: Indiana Congressman Mike Pence addressing the rallying assembly this morning before beginning the annual Walk for Life in Washington DC: We gather to mark the 38th anniversary of the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott. And we gather today in the shadow of a new pro-life majority on Capitol Hill. And we will keep gathering until Roe v. Wade is sent to the ash heap of history where it belongs. These are trying times in the life of this nation. Our economy is struggling and our national government ...

Religion & Society

It is only human to be exhilarated if one thinks one is riding on the crest of the future.

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Saturday, January 22nd, 2011: Sociologist Peter L. Berger, concluding his 1970 book, A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural: I would like to emphasize once more that anyone who approaches religion with an interest in its possible truth, rather than in this or that aspect of its social manifestations, would do well to cultivate a measure of indifference in the matter of empirical prognoses. History brings out certain questions of truth, makes certain answers more or less accessible, constructs and di...

Politics & Economics

Of the increasingly common bad habit of local politicians to resort to cosmic sermonizing…

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Friday, January 21st, 2011: Victor David Hanson, writing yesterday for National Review Online, on when sermonizing on real or imagined global issues trumps the exercise of competence for local officials – or camouflages its absence: Dupnik is a good example of the increasingly common bad habit of local politicians to resort to cosmic sermonizing when more mundane challenges go unaddressed. In Dupnik’s case, it is hard to monitor all the nuts like Loughner in the sheriff’s department files to ensure they don’t get guns and bullets and...