How do you conceive of a civilization or a society? When you discuss history, does a society rise and fall? Is it young or old, solar or lunar, a part of a season-cycle? How do you picture a society’s lifespan?
Allegory versus application The question of who Tom Bombadil is has puzzled Tolkien’s readers ever since he came out. Maiar? Valar? Man? Elf? Something else? He seems to possess certain traits which imply or exclude each of these, and the
Third Way theology is abdication, cowardice, and dereliction of duty. The pretension of ‘third way’ theology is that it joins neither side and charts a distinctively Christian course. The reality is that it acts as an excuse to stand out
Last week covered the foundations of symbolism (symmetry, sameness, and difference), as well as the levels of intentional present in narrative uses of symbolism. This week I promised to discuss…. Analogy Analogy is symbolic, though it is not symbolism proper.
Christians sometimes end up guarding God’s foes…. Winger hits one nail on the head here. Churches and evangelists which refuse to address the difficult issues are betraying the witness they proffer. If a man has an idol (which is what
A Tale of Three Values “Truth, justice, and the American way,” runs the classic Superman slogan. Even I know that, with next to no comic book exposure and never having watched one of the Superman movies (I have seen some
Symbolism is the domain of the weird and the wibbly, of the grandmasters and the buffoons. On the one hand, it seems a rich field, ripe for the author and reader to revel in. On the other, it seems a
What can you glean from face value? The point of this short consideration is not to answer the material it considers, at least not to the point of refutation. The goal of this assessment is to 1) establish why I
Originally Published Here I neither celebrate Halloween nor condemn it. However, for those who (understandably) want to replace it with Reformation Day, the challenge isn’t just to replace it; the challenge is to outdo it. Less than this, and Reformation
The problem of evil is old and tired and jagged, the sort of thing philosophers regularly cut themselves on quite badly, then go on bleeding all over history. Then along comes an ordinary Christian and deals with it in practice,