Theology That Bites Back
“I know enough Anglo-Saxon to be a hazard, but not enough to set up shop as a translator of anything so important as Beowulf. I know the words attercop, which means spider, and rimcraft, which means arithmetic, and merscmealuwe, which means marshmallow. But unfortunately, none of those words comes up in Beowulf really, and so there I am, just sitting there.”
Beowulf, p. 1
Introduction: One episode in the Narnia stories has caused no little consternation for evangelical parents as they have read to their children, and that element of the story concerns the salvation of Emeth. On another occasion, I discussed the curious fact of Susan’s absence from the heavenly regions in The Last Battle. A second curious …
Introduction: There are two things that really bother evangelical friends of Narnia, and they both show up in The Last Battle. One of them is the presence of Emeth in Aslan’s country, and the other is the absence of Susan in that same country. The character of Emeth is a striking one, and the problem …
There is an old joke that has an evangelical say something like this to a liberal—“I’ll call you a Christian if you call me a scholar.” But whenever conservative believers enter into the world of such trade-offs, the end result is always something like Simple Simon going to the fair. They come home, if they …
His books well trimm’d and in the gayest style, Like regimental coxcombs rank and file, Adorn his intellects as well as shelves And teach him notions splendid as themselves. William Cowper
As I noted in my brief review of Pride and Prejudice below, Jane Austen is amazing. A truly wise woman, she wrote a novel of two kinds of people — people who change and grow, and people who do not. This is simply another way of marking those who are capable of repentance and those …
Peter Leithart recently set the cat among the pigeons by claiming here and here that Protestants can’t write. He did this as a Protestant, writing, so we really should be dubious from the outset. Among the scholarly responses to this flight of learned fancy, I commend to you Derek Rishmawy and Steven Wedgeworth. But I …
Every Saturday night at our Sabbath dinner, we have a round of catechism questions for the kids. The last question, the one I ask all of them together, is “Kids, what’s the point of the whole Bible?” The answer is “Kill the dragon, get the girl!” This was the point of the biblical story before …
One of the magazines I subscribe to is Reformed Perspective, and I would encourage you to do the same. If you like, you can get over there and subscribe right now. I bring this up because the cover story of their most recent issue was on “Christian Fantasy after Lewis and Tolkien,” a theme worthy …
Like many conservatives, I have been able to enjoy the writing of Marilynne Robinson, even though she appears to be quite at home in the liberal mainline tradition. Despite the differences I have had with her outlook on many issues, her novels have been written with depth, nuance, and sensitivity. This is apparently because she …
