Thou, whose sweet youth and early hopes inhance
Thy rate and price, and mark thee for a treasure;
Hearken unto a Verser, who may chance
Ryme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure.

A verse may finde him, who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice.

That is the opening to George Herbert's "The Church-Porch," a long poem that begins his…

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"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, …

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The sources of that worry depend on which field it …

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Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 And we know that for those who love Go…

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I did a discussio…

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“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who h…

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A pastor recently put a variation of that question to me and—surprisingly—I was not quite prepared for it. Perhaps I have become more disconnected from evangelical modes of moral reasoning than I have realized, but the pastor’s (well-intentioned) effort to get clear on what forms of body enhancements are permissible seemed…

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The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. — Romans 8:16-22

“We are God’s children now,” John writes in his first epistle, “and what we will be has not yet been revealed” (1 Jn. 3:2). Whatever we will be, though, will be worth the suffering that we undergo now. We are heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, Paul had said, if “we suffer with him in order so that we may also be glorified with him” (8:17). Paul doubly constrains the role of suffering within these verses. On the one hand, it is teleologically ordered toward our glorification with Christ: if it has a purpose or point, it is only found there and then. Yet if Paul had left matters there, he would have been in grave danger of valorizing suffering: we might think that we should seek out the suffering as a means of expanding or intensifying the glory that we enjoy then. But Paul will not have this, either: the sufferings of this present time turn out to be not have “worth” relative to the glory that is to be revealed in us—that is, they are not “choiceworthy,” they have no intrinsic merit or value in relation to our future glorification.

The revelation of humanity as the glory of God is the consummation of creation. It is strange, in one way, that Paul expands the scope of our imaginations so broadly at this juncture: the crisis of the will and the mortification of our sins through the power of the Spirit do not obviously lead one to think next of the cosmos. What hath the groaning of creation to do with my overcoming of sin? Much, I think: if the deeply introspective moral psychology of Romans 7 narrowed our attention to the granular details of desire and action, these verses concurrently elevate humanity within God’s economy and relieve the psychological pressure that has been built up by turning our attention outward to the rest of God’s cosmos. “Consider the lilies of the field,” Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, which is a sane bit of counsel for anyone who happens to be too anxious about their lives: what we discover if we do, though, is that the glory that arrays the flower, which is greater than the glory of Solomon, looks forward to the glory that is to be revealed in us.

By turning us toward creation, Paul recapitulates the argument of his first chapter: God’s “eternal power and divine nature” had been manifested since the creation of the world, but humanity turned away from the “glory of the incorruptible God for images resembling corrupt man and birds and animals and creeping things” (1:18-23). If Paul has anything like a “natural theology” there, it must be qualified by his contention that creation has been subjected to “futility” here in his eighth chapter. “Vanity, vanity,” the preacher says in Ecclesiastes, “all is vanity”—and Paul concurs. Whatever the witness creation supplies for the glory of God is, in this way, negative: it is in “bondage to corruption,” the very “corruption” that has no contact with God and that governs humanity in 1:23.

Creation itself is in perpetual labor, never able to give birth. Its witness to the reality of God’s life is real, but cannot be fruitful. It knows the secret of its own existence, as it awaits with longing the revealing of the sons of God—but only when that happens will creation itself gain the solidity and substance that perfects it. This subjection to futility is the Lord’s doing: futility and corruption are the Lord’s penalty and punishment for human rebellion. The intensified labor imposed on Adam after the Fall means creation itself will come up short from what God had originally planned for it. This futility and corruption constrains human action, by expanding the domain of “necessity” to which we are beholden: were creation not conditioned by “vanity,” we would have to spend less time laboring in the fields for our bread and have more time to occupy ourselves with other, even higher ends. The difficulties and burdens of our needs (“our daily bread”) are much higher so long as we and creation no longer sing the same harmonious tune.

The revelation of our glory, as a result, is the revelation of our freedom—a freedom from the passions and sinful deeds of the body that Paul has spent the past two chapters elaborating, which are exacerbated and intensified through our struggles with creation. The unselfconscious ease that lies at the heart of true freedom depends on overcoming the anxiety about both our standing and our basic needs, both of which are intensified by creation’s resistance to our work. The passions and sinful deeds of the body are both intensified by the world’s resistance to us: our anxiety about the future impels us to be greedy, our worries about status animates our envy, the vanity of our work when we encounter creation’s resistance induces anger and despair. The world of creation, which is subject to corruption, is the occasion for our sinful passions and deeds of the body to manifest themselves: creation’s slavery to futility is the objective, public context for our subject slavery to sin. For our freedom to be glory, it must not only involve the eradication of our sins but the transfiguration of our lives and contexts so that everything we do and touch radiates with the light of Jesus Christ. The freedom of the glory of the children of God is the freedom of our love—which means action in worship, the cultivation of creation so that we can bring our firstfruits to God as a sacrifice of praise.

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I don’t have plans to read J.D. Vance’s new memoir (unless someone wants to pay me to review it), but I enjoyed listening to Ross’s interview with him. It is fascinating—and depressing—to see how younger Republican ambivalence (at best) toward Israel has made its way into the administration. Vance’s willingness to lecture Israeli critics of his deal with Iran on grounds that they should “trust” Donald Trump ignores the central reason for their criticisms, which is not about trusting Trump but trusting Iran. Vance has staked his political future that they can be.

I was glad to see this piece by Scott Klusendorf on why the pro-life movement should reject ‘Equal Protection’ bills.

The Penultimate Word

“The love of Christ is not an absorbing, but a radiating love. The more we love Him, the more we shall most certainly love others. Some have not much natural power of loving, but the love of Christ will strengthen it. Some have had the springs of love dried up by some terrible earthquake. They will find ‘fresh springs’ in Jesus, and the gentle flow will be purer and deeper than the old torrent could ever be. Some have been satisfied that it should rush in a narrow channel, but He will cause it to overflow into many another, and widen its course of blessing. Some have spent it all on their God-given dear ones. Now He is come whose right it is; and yet in the fullest resumption of that right, He is so gracious that He puts back an even larger measure of the old love into our hand, sanctified with His own love, and energized with His blessing, and strengthened with His new commandment, ‘That ye love one another, as I have loved you.’” — Frances Ridley Havergal

Tim Talks Politics

The Pro-Life Movement Amidst Conservative Realignment with Matthew Lee Anderson

When he was last on the podcast in 2024, Baylor’s Matthew Lee Anderson unpacked a prescient article he had recently published arguing for the pro-life movement to readjust its political calculus as it found itself not quite at the center of the 2024 Trump coalition…

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a month ago · 1 like · Tim Milosch and Matthew Lee Anderson

I talked with recently about the pro-life movement’s current challenges. I haven’t had an outlet for my thoughts on what has happened to the movement since Trump was elected, so I had more to say than I expected.

On to the main fare, though: I gave a talk last week at Trinity Anglican Seminary on the glory of God and the ethics of reputation. The talk was essentially a prolegomena for future work, but I thought you might be interested in it. My friend Alex Fogelman (who is an award-winning author) was a delightful hosts; he is doing excellent work up at Trinity. Unfortunately, they did not record the Q&A—which was “spicy,” as the kids say.

I am not going to post the full text of the talk here, for various reasons. But I thought I would at least include an except. I plan to say much more about this and related questions in the years to come—which is simply a reminder that most of my writing on this platform happens behind the ‘paywall,’ for reasons I have explained here. You are very welcome to join the very small, overly loyal crew of people behind it—for free, even, if you want. Just send me an email.

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We can begin our sketch of a Christian ethic of reputation, then, by considering more closely the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to try to rescue it from the banalities we often subject it to. The glory of the Lord is the manifestation of his life in the fullness of his beauty and peace; in revealing his glory, the Lord so concentrates his attention and love that it threatens to dissolve the creaturely forms that attempt to either to contain or look upon it. When Moses asks to see the LORD’s glory at Sinai, he is told that no one may look on the face of God and live (Ex. 33:20). When Jesus is transfigured on the Mountain, Peter, James and John put their faces on the ground, ritually re-enacting Isaiah’s contrition when he glimpses the LORD seated on his throne (in his sixth chapter). The glory of the Lord is the incomprehensible radiance of his beauty and love, shining forth in the fullness of his freedom and grace.

God’s action in salvation history prepares us to encounter his glory as the glory of the one who loves. The cross of Jesus Christ is not the pre-eminent manifestation of God’s glory, as is often preached. Jesus’ union with the Father through the Spirit is never broken, though it is mediated by his creaturely limits. No matter how mild our Savior is, he does not ‘lay his glory by,’ as another Wesley hymn would have it. Yet his glory is veiled during his earthly life, visible in its fullness only to the Father: the glory of Christ on the cross is the glory of a clean conscience, which animates his lament: not even the Father, who sees and knows all, may impugn his work, which authorizes Jesus’ cry of indignation at the indignity he is suffering. Though the glory of God is veiled at the cross, the cross reveals the humility that lies at its center. God’s glory is invulnerable to the shame, humiliation, and stigma this world imposes: his glory is compatible with lowering himself for the sake of those he loves. Jesus Christ is superior to his persecutors: he reminds Peter that he has the authority to call legions of angels to his aid. But he comes instead among us as one who serves, who is not anxious to assert his dignity or status as the Son of God but who is patient and longsuffering for our sake. As the Son of God does not “grasp” equality with the Father, so he consents to the humiliation of the cross—which means we have nothing to fear when the Lord reveals himself in his glory, for the superiority of the Lord Jesus Christ over us is the infinite power of his love and mercy.

Before he manifests his glory, though, the Lord authorizes us to call upon him by giving us his name. What’s in a name, Juliet asks. The rose would yet smell as sweet were we to call it something else, and so Romeo would “retain that dear perfection which he owes” were he “not Romeo call’d.” All true. Yet he is called Romeo, a name that both summons his presence and stands between the star-crossed lovers, intensifying their love by making it taboo and creating the social conditions for its tragic outcome. A name is both a symbol for a person’s life and a repository of the community’s verdict on it; a “good name” expresses the community’s collective opinion about the life it represents. The divine name thus stands at the heart of Israel’s worship, in which Israel calls upon the LORD: the name of the LORD does not replace his glory, but is the means by which the divine presence is invoked. The Lord’s name in this way becomes the locus of his reputation; it signifies his honor among the nations. In his exaltation, Jesus Christ is given the “name above every name” so that at the name of Jesus “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” The glory we give to the name of Jesus is the fitting response for his mighty acts: “Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name,” the Psalmist prays, “worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.”

The honor of the Lord’s name is governed not only by his action, though, but by the conduct of everyone who bears it. The Lord places his name upon us in baptism, which authorizes us to call upon the Father as his children and also makes his reputation vulnerable to our (mis)conduct. When we sin, we fail to iconically display God’s life and dishonor his name, bringing it into disrepute and disgrace. Public sin, which has traditionally been called notorious, makes “scandal” a possibility: in dishonoring Jesus’ name, we make it harder for others to enter more deeply into God’s life—setting up a ‘stumbling block,’ as it were, to their faith. We can think through the logic of “scandal” by asking how many people are “harmed” when one Christian murders another, or how many victims there are when a priest abuses a parishioner? The answer depends on how widely the story is known. Public sins have more “victims” than private sins: the notorious offender disfigures God’s image in himself, failing to give God his due; he injures another person; and he defames the Lord’s name, diminishing the status of everyone who bears it and thereby making it more costly for people to join the church.

Because his people’s infidelity casts disrepute upon his name, the Lord acts for its sake in redeeming the world through Jesus Christ. The Lord is jealous for his honor—not because he needs honor but because humanity needs to honor God. Nothing can diminish or enhance God’s glory, which he enjoys in the perfection of his blessed life. But the honor of God’s name is the doorway through which the nations come to him, which means the Lord will vindicate it for their sake. God’s regard for his name means he has a stake in the lives of the people who bear it: the superiority of his name rests upon his willingness to forgive our sins in a manner that brings about rectitude and justice. At Sinai, the LORD reveals his name to Moses as he passes by and authoritatively judges his own character: “The LORD, the LORD,” he says, “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Ex. 34:6-7). The Lord’s forgiveness is thus intertwined with the fact that his people bear his name; at key junctures in Israel’s history, including at Sinai, the LORD’s reputation is all that stands between the LORD and Israel’s destruction for her sins. For this reason, the Lord’s name is the only ground on which God’s people may plead for mercy: “Help us, O God of our salvation,” the Psalmist prays, “for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name’s sake!” As the Lord says in Ezekiel, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came” (Ez. 36:22).

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This is an excellent essay on the difficulties surrounding how we talk about “assisted dying.”

I would endorse much of’s criticisms of the contemporary apologetics ethos, especially his contention that they are producing consumers of answers rather than people “who have learned how to investigate reality for themselves.” As I wrote in Called into Questions:

“Apologetics has filled a void for many Christians, serving as a gateway to a deeper intellectual life. Paradoxically, though, a faith formed out of anxiety about confidence will never attain it. Treating apologetics as the fundamental mode of the Christian intellect is a mistake, as it moves inquiry away from the pursuit of understanding and makes our thinking alternately hostile and defensive. The “confidence” apologetics supplies will oscillate between a superficial bravado that answers every question and a deconstructive rejection of everything one has been given. If people are not formed to love the truth for its own sake, they will eventually turn against it for the sake of convenience, comfort, or respectability.”

Tedla Woldeyohannes

Apologetics After YouTube: Why the Old Training Model No Longer Works

Christian apologetics is facing a severe structural crisis, but the nature of the problem is widely misunderstood. The crisis is not that the church has too few apologists, nor is it that contemporary challenges to Christianity have suddenly become intellectually unanswerable. The crisis is educational. We have constructed a mass-production system that …

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a month ago · 11 likes · Tedla Woldeyohannes

The Penultimate Word

“[God'] has created us to love. We have a sealed treasure of love, which either remains sealed, and then gradually dries up and wastes away, or is unsealed and poured out, and yet is the fuller and not the emptier for the outpouring. The more love we give, the more we have to give. So far it is only natural. But when the Holy Spirit reveals the love of Christ, and sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts, this natural love is penetrated with a new principle as it discovers a new Object. Everything that it beholds in that Object gives it new depth and new colours. As it sees the holiness, the beauty, and the glory, it takes the deep hues of conscious sinfulness, unworthiness, and nothingness. As it sees even a glimpse of the love that passeth knowledge, it takes the glow of wonder and gratitude. And when it sees that love drawing close to its deepest need with blood-purchased pardon, it is intensified and stirred, and there is no more time for weighing and measuring; we must pour it out, all there is of it, with our tears, at the feet that were pierced for love of us.” — Frances Ridley Havergal

A possible basis for a post- but non-Christian ethics can now be sought only in a dialogue relationship with other men (eg., I—thou; I—we). Since gratitude to God for one’s life, expressed in divine worship, is now no longer the permanent, fundamental act of the free human person, mutual gratitude between human subjects can have no more than secondary, …

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“So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but…

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“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, h…

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Wherever a self-revelation of the sovereignly free and personal God is absent, man tries to find the bearings for his moral life in the order of the world around him. Since man owes his existence to a multiplicity of cosmic laws, it is quite natural that he both fuse and confuse his origin from God with his origin from nature. However, such a theocosmol…

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“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh s…

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“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order …

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These two domains structure the core of the 10 Commandments as a chiasm, a list that together distills the contents of the imago Dei; as God’s glory is preserved through our refusal to create idols, so we ought not covet the spouse or possessions of our neighbor (1/2 & 10); as we bear the name of the Lord truthfully, so we speak the truth about our neighbor (3 & 9); as we remember the Sabbath, so we honor work by not stealing (4 & 8); as we honor our parents, so we ensure we revere marriage and generation by not committing adultery (5 & 7); and at the center, we honor the “image of God” by revering the life that makes our flourishing possible.

While I worked this interdependency of wealth and fertility out in the context of Psalm 17 earlier this week, I want to here explore Psalm 62—another psalm in which David expresses his singular reliance upon God in contrast to others. “For God alone my soul waits in silence,” he says at the opening of the poem, “from him comes my salvation” (v. 1). His lament is against those who “attack a man” (ish is the Hebrew word—which will become important), and attempt to “thrust him down from his high position” (v 4). Social standing is not the source or grounds of David’s security, though: his “glory” (kavod) rests on God (v. 7).

Here is where matters become fascinating (to me, at least), both historically and theologically. In nearly every contemporary English translation, Psalm 62:9 reads something like: “Those of low estate are but a breath; those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath.” The formulation David uses is identical to Psalm 49:2, which the ESV renders as “both low and high, rich and poor together” and which subsequently deals with similar themes of the vanity of life (49:10-12, 16-20). Behind both lies two different Hebrew phrases, “sons of adam” (low) and “sons of ish” (high). In Genesis 1, the adam is created—and then when the woman is made from him, he becomes the ish (as she is the ishah; Gen. 2:23).

What hangs on translating “sons of adam” and “sons of ish” in terms of status? Much, I think. In the first place, neither the Septuagint nor the Vulgate—two of the most ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible—use status language for these verses. In fact, they both eclipse any difference between the Hebrew terms altogether, rendering them identically: οἱ υἱοὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, and filii hominum. The Wycliffe Bible in 1382 preserves this tradition, translating it as “sons of men” in both cases. From what I can tell, the earliest English translation to import status-language is the Coverdale Bible, which translates Psalm 49:2 as “high and low” (but leaves Psalm 62:9 the same). Behind that change lies, I think, Martin Bucer’s Psalms commentaries—and, even farther, a medieval Jewish reading of the text that they draw from that frames the difference between “bene Adam” and “bene ish” as one of status. The earliest Psalm 62:9 introduces status is the Geneva Bible of 1599: “Yet the children of men are vanity, the chief men are liars: to lay them upon a balance they are altogether lighter than vanity.”

The best thing that can be said of the translation is that Psalm 62:4 assumes that the ish under attack has an elevated position, which would entail that the “sons of ish” of 62:9 are similarly distinguished. Yet I confess I find this wanting, if only because everywhere else in the Hebrew Bible “sons of ish” refers to concrete individuals irrespective of their status, like when Joseph’s brothers use the phrase in protesting, “We are all sons of one man” (Gen. 42:11; cf. 42:13; Leviticus 24:10). In 1 Samuel 9:1, the author lists a number of sons of particular individuals before adding that one of them is a “man of wealth,” as though being a son of an ish is insufficient on its own to designate status. In 2 Samuel 1:13, the individual who describes himself as a bene ish, ‘son of a man,’ is an Amelkite “sojourner”—which is hardly an elevated status (and see also 1 Chron. 11:22; Ps. 4:2; Lament. 3:33). There is extremely little warrant within the Hebrew Bible to construe bene ish in the status-laden terms as our (Protestant) English translations have given it to us.

And, conversely, there is little reason to take bene Adam in Psalm 49 as indicating “high status.” Considering that both 49:12 and 49:20’s use of adam to speak of humanity in its unadorned condition (hence both verses add a distinct term for “splendor” to describe the nature of the adam that will not remain, which the LXX translates as τιμῇ, “honor”). If the adam is not inherently in an elevated position—and how could he be, as he is created prior to any others against whom he might compare himself—then why should we take “sons of adam” as indicating an inherently high-status position?

If not status, though, how should we understand Psalm 62’s contention that the “children of the adam” are a breath, and the “children of ish” a delusion? The notion that humanity as such, in its unadorned condition (adam), is “vanity” is hardly revolutionary: the Psalms well know of human life’s ephemerality. Yet it seems plausible that the Psalmist is proposing that a lineage offers no real security against the ravages of time. The logic of patrilineage which is on every page of the Hebrew Bible required the perpetuation of the male’s name, as evidenced by the peculiar logic of Levirite marriage. Yet David recognizes that even this offers no more substantial protection for a person in the face of death: God alone is our portion and our hope, not children. Given my proposal about the interdependency of fertility and labor, it is not surprising that David immediately turns in Psalm 62:10 to chasten our hearts from becoming too attached to money: “Put no trust in extortion; set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart on them.” Psalm 62 verses 9 and 10 together recapitulate the twin domains of fertility and labor, underscoring the vanity of seeking after either in a manner that displaces the soul’s pursuit of God alone.

This is another way of saying what I said earlier this week: Jesus’ contention that we ought allow the “dead to bury the dead” and hate our mother or father in order to follow him is not a radical alteration but a development of one subtle thread of the Psalms. It is no more an insult to children than it is to wealth to say that neither will bring the contentment and joy for which we have been made: the restlessness of our hearts will find peace, as Augustine famously wrote, only when they rest in God.

It does mean, though, that at the end of the day the only “pro-natalism” that the Christian moral theologian should endorse is that which is Christian all the way down: “seek first the kingdom of God,” and only then will “all these things” that cause anxiety and concern—especially our children and our money—will be added unto us. Because not even our lineage or children can secure our names in this world: the only real permanence they will have is if they are written in the book of life.

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This is a good caution against using “culture” as an explanation for, well, any social reality. At the same time, I think the underlying materialism is still too reductive (as the author comes near acknowledging at the end), if only because many economic decisions are made in accordance with the ways in which status is given and won (even if that is not a part of the conscious intention).

Princeton’s recent change to its "honor code” because of AI reminded me of this old Stanley Hauerwas essay on honor in the universities, which is one of the only contemporary treatments of honor from a theological ethicist that I know of. It has everything that makes one love (and hate) Hauerwas, including this gem: “Cheating is a more serious crime than murder for those engaged in the activities of learning and teaching.” Will I tell my students that this fall? YES, YES I WILL.

Out and About

I wrote about everyone’s favorite subject—vasectomies—for Christianity Today. Read the article that commenters on Facebook described as “crazytown.” (They really loved it.)

My friend also wrote about them, because masochism is apparently catching.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, but the “philosophy of tragedy” course I taught this spring might have been the best course I will ever teach—if only because we read five, FIVE Shakespeare plays. I thought you needed to know that some of the students, at least, might be alright.

College Books

It’s graduation season, which means that it’s an appropriate time to buy books. If you have a know a high-school or college graduate who wants to think seriously about how to make the most of their intellectual lives in college, here are a few ideas.

1. A.G. Sertillanges, O.P.: The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods

2. Alan Jacobs: How to Think and The Pleasures of Reading

3. Zena Hitz: Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

4. Paul Gutacker: Practicing Life Together: A Common Rule for Common Growth (It’s about much more than the intellectual life, but worth reading for that reason!)

5. Joseph Pieper: Leisure: The Basis of Culture (I almost left this off because I think it can have unintended pernicious side-effects…but it’s worth considering.

And if I may modestly propose my own book Called into Questions for the very strange, peculiar, odd human being who might not like any of the above, I am still relatively happy with it.

The Penultimate Word

14. Hope in him, you whole assembly of the people…Leap over your enemies, leap over all those who offer you resistance, or block your path, or hate you: leap over all of them. Hope in him, you whole assembly of the people. Pour out your hearts in his presence. Do not give ground before those who taunt you with “Where is your God?” Another psalm lamented, My tears have been bread to me day and night, as every day I hear the taunt, Where is your God? And how did that person respond? I reflected on these things, and poured out my soul above myself (Ps. 42:3-4). I called to mind the derision I had heard, Where is your God? I remembered it, and poured out my soul above myself. In search of my God I poured out my soul above myself, seeking to reach him, for I did not want to remain confined within myself. You must do likewise: hope in him, you whole assembly of the people. Pour out your hearts in his presence, pleading, confessing, and full of hope. Do not keep your hearts shut up inside your hearts, but pour out your hearts in his presence. What you pour out is not lost. He is my refuge. If he makes himself your refuge, why are you afraid to pour out your hearts? Cast your care upon the Lord and hope in him. Pour out your hearts in his presence, for God is our ally. Why are you frightened amid whisperers, talebearers, people hateful to God? They oppose you openly where they can, and where they cannot they secretly lay traps; they pretend to speak to you fair, while their real intention is hostile. But why be frightened of them? God is our ally. Are they challenging God? Are they stronger than he is? God is our ally, have no fear.If God is for us, who can stand against us? (Rom 8:31). Pour out your hearts in his presence, leaping over to him, for God is our ally.” — Saint Augustine

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