John Dickson has an undeceptions podcast with historian, Tom Holland, who has written, Dominion: The making of the Western Mind. The popular perception is that "Christianity thrives on ignorance, sunk us all into the dark ages, and has resisted human rights and equality for most of its 1500 year reign" so we ask, "What have the Christians ever done for us?" Although Holland is not a believing Christian, he reckons "many of us have things completely back to front. It's Christianity," he insists, "that gave us many of the secular humanitarian ideals we hold so dear."
In Mercatornet, June 29, 2021, Jonathan Van Maren shares his interview of Niall Ferguson, the Scottish historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute. Ferguson's reflections on his personal journey, as well as the journey of other public intellectuals like Roger Scruton, Douglas Murray, Tom Holland and Jordan Peterson, is fascinating. One of Van Maren's conclusions is, "Viewing Western civilisation with its Christian soul cut out, many are now willing to say: “We need Christ.” What they are unable, thus far, to say, is: “I need Christ.”
The DeWeese-Boyd v. Gordon College case in Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) could impact anyone in Massachusetts who works at a religiously affiliated school or hospital, but the implications could be far broader. The dispute began with a disagreement about LGBTQ+ policies which is not uncommon. The private, evangelical Christian college asked the SJC essentially to rule that any Christian who works at a Christian institution is a ‘minister’ which would prevent normal rules about workplace discrimination from being applied. This SJC ruled that the associate professor of social work was not a “minister.”
I've been reading Islamic Imperialism: A History by Efraim Karsh. I didn't know anything about Islamic history when I started and still only have a vague understanding of the big picture. The names are unfamiliar so it is difficult to keep the cast of characters straight. The pages of unillustrated narrative haven’t helped me develop a timetable of the millennia or a big picture of developments, but I have a renewed appreciation of the difficulty that students have when studying history with a limited understanding of the context and little intrinsic motivation. I’m reading because I want to and have no time restraints. Students rarely have these advantages.
An excerpt from the book, Nature's Case for God, by theologian and philosopher, John Frame, reminded me how important a proper view of God's world is to the task of education. Schools primarily study various aspects of God's world so if we have a distorted picture of the purpose of created, physical reality, we will also have a distorted picture of the purpose of education. Frame asks, "Does natural theology violate sola Scriptura?" His answer resonates with me.
…the principle does not forbid us to seek knowledge of God from creation. Rather, Scripture itself tells us that God is revealed everywhere and that human beings are therefore under obligation, not only to hear God’s word in Scripture, but to obey his revelation in all creation."
Studying God's world cannot be separated from God's word, but neither can God's word be separated from God's world.
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