Theology That Bites Back
My choice for this month’s book is Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. It is, in a number of ways, a powerful and moving book. I listened to it through Audible, and as it is read by the author himself, I got an additional sense of closed rhetorical distance—like he was riding around in my truck …
So then, I began using Logos Bible Software quite a few years ago—I think the version was Logos 4, so I have been at it for at least a decade. And my memory is murky on the point, meaning that it could be even earlier than that. Anyway you cut it, I am a long …
So my book of the month selection this go round is The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, who was one of the more celebrated mystery writers of the twentieth century. The book was first recommended to me a few years ago by my friend Peter Hitchens, and I just recently got around to reading …
Introduction: So let us discuss some profiles in profiling. Suppose that some bank in our area was robbed by a Caucasian guy, around 6 foot 1 or so, brown hair and beard, and it also happened that he was driving a pick-up truck. Now let us suppose further that as the cops were scrambling all …
My apologies for creating the impression that I somehow got derailed from my ongoing review of Aimee Byrd’s book. I had inadvertently created this impression by getting derailed in fact, but it was not because of sloth, forgetfulness, ennui, or anything else bad like that. It was the press of other topics, all of them …
Introduction: In her next chapter, Aimee Byrd continues a similar pattern. She says a lot of good things, like a handful of pearls with no thread to make a necklace. But she also says some worrisome things, and then third, she assembles part of what she says to support her central non sequitur. After addressing …
Knowing Christ by Mark Jones is a worthy companion volume to J.I. Packer’s classic Knowing God. It is a work of devotional theology or, if you prefer, theological devotion. Nancy and I read this one together aloud, bit by bit, and that was a good way to work through something as dense and as hand-packed …
I don’t have a great deal to say about this next chapter—on Christ as our Elder Brother—because most of it is very good. The mistake that Aimee Byrd is making is the same one again. She says a number of valuable things about the biblical relationship of brothers and sisters, some of them even glorious …
Introduction: Aimee Byrd is very aware of a mistake that would, in this kind of cultural analysis, be a very easy one to make. I am glad she is aware of it because it shows she is actively trying to avoid making it, and that is all to the good. Unfortunately, this awareness has not …
Introduction: And so—as we continue to work our way through Aimee Byrd’s book, Why Can’t We Be Friends?—we continue to find stuff to talk about. In part I suppose that this is because life between the sexes is variegated and complex, and not a simple and straightforward relationship, like that which exists between Point A …
