Today’s BreakPoint commentary by Chuck Colson gives a brief review and survey of Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason.
Concludes Colson: “This book will you give you some very good ammunition to answer those critics who come up with the same tired, old arguments about the fact that Christianity held back the progress of civilization. Nonsense. The evidence is exactly the opposite.”
Earlier this month, we marked the 100th anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s birth on February 4, in what is now Wroclaw, Poland. In a message before the International Bonhoeffer Conference on February 3, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said,
A brief but timely editorial appears in this month’s issue of Christianity Today, “We Are What We Behold.” Here’s a taste:
“…evangelicals have wrestled with our relationship to power. When in a position of influence (and in our better moments), we leverage power to better the lives of our neighbors. Cultural savvy enables us to successfully translate the gospel for a changing world.
When I see things like this going on, I ask myself, “What makes Christianity different? What makes me different?” Here are some guidelines for a Christian response to slander, hatred, and persecution:
From the State of the Union:
“Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing.”
And all along I’ve been thinking it was divine providence.
A brief opinion from yours truly, featured in the February issue of The Banner, the denominational magazine of the Christian Reformed Church in North America: “Building on the Tithe.”
With an eye towards Christians in other parts of the world, I observe, “In North America the conflict we face is largely between spending our leisure or disposable income on ourselves and spending it on others.” Check out the rest.
An excellent post by Bryan Caplan at EconLog examines the intentions of eugenics against the actual effects of the implementation of such policies. His point? “Even if genetics explained ALL differences in success, many policies that raise average genetic quality would backfire.”
Today, Orthodox Christians all over the world are celebrating Epiphany, one of the great feast days of the Eastern Church.
Epiphany is, for the Orthodox, the manifestation of the Lord’s divinity and the mystery of the Trinity, the inauguration of the sacrament of baptism, and the beginning of the preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. For the Orthodox, Epiphany is also a profoundly ecological moment. Churches hold Blessing of the Waters services which commemorate Christ’s baptism in the Jordan River, an event that transformed not just earthly Creation, but the entire cosmos.
First item in this month’s Christianity Today Bookmarks.
Conclusion: “Disconcertingly, Stark argues without qualification, nuance, and the balancing of perspectives that academics love so much. Nonetheless, he may be right.”
Here’s what Shakespeare’s Hamlet has to say: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Hamlet, 1.V).
To be sure, the immediate cause of Hamlet’s comment is the appearance of the ghost of his father. But it seems right to understand the appearance of the ghostly apparition as intended to be a kind of supernatural revelation. After all, the ghost is making itself known from the depths of Purgatory, “confined to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away.”
