03 Jun 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
Not so long ago Darryl G Hart, noting that Pastor Wedgeworth and I often write together and when doing so use the first person plural pronoun, punned on this usage and on our surname initials and dubbed us "WE." And WE couldn't be more pleased with that tag. But it's not just us; in our informal schola...
Read more → 03 Jun 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
Dr Laurence O' Donnell of the Bavinck Institute offers here an excellent examination of John Owen's handling of one of the most contested arcana of Reformed theology, the so-called pactum salutis.
Read more → 31 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
It's something of a trick question. Michael Hannon, drawing on the reflections of the great 20th c Thomist Charles de Koninck, replies to Robert George's argument that the common good is not an intrinsic good, but in doing so, Hannon decisively rebuts the idea that saying that it is an intrinsic good...
Read more → 30 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
Sally Satel writing at the Atlantic urges the distinction between brain, as studied by neuroscience, and mind. She strongly suggests that mind is irreducible to brain, but seems unwilling to go all the way and say that brain is instrumental to mind, which is higher. She does however note the ominous...
Read more → 30 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
Dr Leonardo de Chirico notes at Reformation21 that Pope Francis reasserts the traditional papalist doctrine that the Word is wider than the Scripture, a doctrine which, Dr de Chirico observes, insures the need for a magisterial arbiter to authoritatively recognize that Word diffused beyond the Writ....
Read more → 28 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
Geoffrey Parker, writing at The Chronicle of Higher Education, points out that quite aside from questions of climate change caused by man, the world has grand seasons and, as always, the 17th century has grand lessons; in this case, the teacher is Tokugawa, Japan.
Read more → 24 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
Gustav Niebuhr reviews Naomi Schaefer Riley's new book on interfaith marriages in the United States. He notes that the American settlement hasn't led as quickly or inevitably to religious indifferentism as many from the very beginning have worried it would. What has developed, at least in the great...
Read more → 23 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
The Jubilee Centre offers a lengthy report by Dr Gai Ferdon on the political use of the Bible in early modern Britain. The absence of any mention of Richard Hooker is extremely curious and might have something to do with the somewhat superficial reading of the relation of Gospel and Mosaic law, and the consequences...
Read more → 23 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
TEC Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori reproaches stuffy old Paul for being so un-inclusive as to reject gifts from Hell. Obviously, she doesn’t think that’s where it came from, but since the Bible says that’s where it came from, one wonders what sort of gift Ms Schori has which supposedly...
Read more → 22 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
Ma Jian tells the horrifying tale of the Chinese Communist Party’s claim of jurisdiction over wombs and thus over life itself. Almost every one of the pregnant women I spoke to had suffered a mandatory abortion. One woman told me how, when she was eight months pregnant with an illegal second child...
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