What Is the Place of Church Tradition?

For some who read this, “church tradition” might mean what their local church has typically done in the past. This is not what I have in mind. By church tradition I am referring to what the majority of Christ’s church has practiced throughout most of its history. What obligation, if any, does it place on our [...]

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Tolstoy, Happiness and Objective Meaning

“Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1).
If one isn’t careful the wealth of this opening line of Anna Karenina can easily be overlooked. This seems to be what happened in Oprah Winfrey’s case considering she included in her book club a book which so obviously opposes [...]

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Dispatches from Red River Gorge

There are some activities so virile, so stout-hearted that a man’s wife cannot understand his desire to engage in them. How can a man explain to his wife the feeling within him that occassionally drives him into the woods to hike for many miles? In my case, I was unable to communicate it. But there [...]

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A Brief Response to the Problem of Evil

What follows below is my notes from a lecture I gave this weekend to a group of homeschool students.
What’s the problem?
“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil” (David Hume, [...]

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Plantinga (almost) on Dawkins

Perhaps while milling around the blogosphere (though it’s less of a sphere and more of jungle these days) you read Alvin Plantinga’s review of Richard’s Dawkins’ less-than-impressive-even-by-atheist-standards The God Delusion on one of any number of blogs. But try looking for it again and you find it is conspicuously absent (and if it’s not, it should be). Apparently, it [...]

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