I love the Irish. They have great ale, good cheese and onion slices. We went to the city this weekend and had beers at McSorley's, my favorite American ale house. Mmmm.

In other news, the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy gave a joint interview recently. I haven't been able to find footage of it, but you can read a transcript (not sure if it's the whole thing) here, and the photo has the most Norman Rockwell-ish light I've seen in some time.

Ginger graciously offered a couple tickets to the Pumpkin's show in Philadelphia last night. It was great. I drove down with a buddy from Princeton and we sat in the 7th row. Good times. Click on the images for larger files.

Fall is officially here! These are the trees right behind our apartment.

It's reading week here at Princeton. For some that means it's Fall break. For me it means sitting in the library doing exegetical work on 1 Thessalonians 4:4. I'm looking at the Greek word "skeuos" (skoo-Os), which can mean alternately: vessel, body, member, or wife. It sounds boring right? Well, I'm loving it. You'd think, oh tedium, but I spent six hours in the library reading a bunch of Greek and looking at commentaries yesterday and I didn't even realize that it was time to go until the librarian kicked me out. I love this life.

Here's a photo of Jack and I walking along the river behind our apartment.

p.s. Old man winter is just around the corner. I can feel him in my bones.....

Friends, this is one of my favorite charities. Go to Todd's Page for more info on the help they need.

Some of you have been asking what it's like here at Princeton Seminary. I think this quotation from Richard of St. Victor about sums it up. It might shock you to learn that Princeton is very much about the development of piety. This is an excerpt from one of my assigned readings.

"It is vain that we grow in riches of divine knowledge unless by them the fire of love is increased in us. For love arising from knowledge and knowledge coming from love must always grow in us, each ministering to the increase of the other by mutual growth, and love and knowledge developing in turn."

-----Richard of St. Victor, from "Selections for Contemplation"

"Kant's critique of the classical proofs for the existence of God may be more of an asset to theology than has often been recognized. For it permits theology to turn its attention from strong rational proofs, on the model of basic science, to a softer rationality that views transcendent knowledge as reliable though mutable. This broader view of reason may help theology reclaim its distinctive vision of knowledge of God that aims to form and transform believers whose trust in divine judgment and mercy is nurtured through scripture, creed and worship. The fragility of that trust reminds Christians of the need for prayer [among other things] to prepare properly for knowing God." (parenthetical comment, mine)

-----Ellen Charry, from "By The Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine"

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."

-----Joan Didion, "The White Album"

What's your narrative?

"O Lord, let Thy mercy be upon us
Who have hoped in thee.
O Lord, in Thee have I hoped;
May I never be confounded."

-----Augustine/Ambrose, late 4th century, baptismal hymn "Te Deum"

"Knowing God rightly, in, through, and as Jesus Christ, believers can confidently 'seek the things that are above' (3:1). Knowing the good news of salvation (indicative mode), believers are to live a life clothed with love (imperative mode; 3:14). The command follows the proclamation of the good news as a consequence and never as a condition. This order is not reversible. Reverse it, and the gospel is turned into a new law."

-----Andrew Purves, from his brief commentary on Colossians in the "Spiritual Formation Bible"

"We must...go deeper than the half-twilight that has fallen over our culture at the end of the modern age. The lack of purpose, meaning, and pattern, which all our study of the natural world and society and the human psyche proclaim, should have made evident to this age that we cannot find life-giving truth and meaning by examining again and again nature, society, and the human psyche. The only hope is in the sacred, which comes to us so gently in Jesus and the holy things of God, lovingly shared by faithful people."

-----Diogenes Allen, from "Steps Along the Way"

Here's an interesting interview with Dave Bazan, of Pedro The Lion fame. I wrote an article on him some time ago you can find it here and I think I pretty much got the story straight.

I like what he has to say about creativity and apologetics in the context of art ,for the Christian.

Earlier this year, the head of the Evangelical Theological Society, Francis Beckwith, announced that he'd re-entered communion with the Roman Catholic church.

For many Protestant Evangelicals, this move was tantamount to apostasy, and the uproar over this guy has, at times, been deafening.

This morning an acquaintance forwarded to me an interview with Beckwith where Beckwith talks about some of the reasons he went back to the Church of Rome after so many years away.

It's worth looking at, and I welcome a good discussion around the issues he brings up. Of particular interest to me is his discussion of Justification and his argument regarding the early Church Fathers.

I love Radiohead, and I wish they'd harken back to being a pop/rock band. I love the experimenal stuff too, but unrealeased tracks like this make me long for the Bends days. . .Enjoy it.

excerpts from this week's New Yorker....

Anthony Lane on Nicolas Sarkozy: "Awaiting your hero for more than two hours is no hardship to the faithful; standing for two hours without earplugs, however, while the cream of soft Euro-rock is hosed into your consciousness, is another matter."

Norman Mailer on losing his memory as he gets older: "It's awful--I'm absolutely without detail memory now. I keep referring to one metaphor: an old man who's still steering a course is analogous to the captain of an old freighter that may or may not make it to port. You keep throwing ballast overboard. So the hearing goes. The eyesight. The knees. This goes. That goes. ...For a novelist, you really have to retain a memory of how things felt even if you're not reporting them directly. My memory for detals of where something took place, when it happened, is very spotty. What I will remember is the emotional tone of a meeting. Facts you can always lookup somewhere."

And Here is an article worth reading about the growing hysteria over people of faith. I just heard that the new Rush album is all about how bad Christians are for the world. Neil Peart needs to stop reading Hume.

Wikipedia. . .democracy in action or Colbert's "truthiness" in action? Both?

For those of you not in the know, Wikipedia generates encyclopedic definitions by way of general consensus. That is, what passes for truth on Wikipedia is none other than the overwhelming opinions of the majority of people who decide to care enough to write and critique the work of others. . . on Wikipedia.

At first blush this sounds like a wonderful idea. Give everyone a shot at defining a topic, and let the rest of the world critique them and argue over what they've said. History, no longer written only by the winner, but also informed by the perspective of the loser! A chance for egalitarian thinking writ large!

Yes. Yes. But wait, how much does the general populace acting as a collective really know anyway? Who's version of the truth are we willing to accept? My experience has been that true democracy of thought often means settling for the lowest common denominator. I think I'm more of an advocate of the free play of the minds of experts than I am the petty infighting of the masses.

Nevertheless, however you come down, Wikipedia raises some interesting questions about the nature of truth, the usefulness of experts in a given field, and the general veracity of a mob.

A few questions that come to mind for me: 1) Is truth nothing more than the consensus of the majority? 2) Is the communication of actual events corrupted more or less with this type of format... as opposed to an encyclopedia of the past? 3) If power was a complaint with regard to the veracity of past texts, what does it say about Wikipedia that Colbert can have all his fans go onto Wikipedia and literally change the definition for a given topic to something completely fallacious?

this is too funny.

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

-----Albert Einstein

My new personal goal is to read (in this order) Robert Fagles' translations of Homer's Odessey and Virgil's Aeneid and then move onto Dorothy Sayer's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Anyone interested in joining me for some discussion around these three books and how each successive one builds on the other?

McLuhan vs. Mailer

Check out this google video with McLuhan and Mailer. Good stuff, especially watching it 40 years later! Who wins in hindsight?