farewell to schollership

Today is not the first day that S.M. Hackett has insulted the look and layout of my blog (see this post), but it is the first time that I have without much hesitation concurred with his estimation. In fact, I've caved in completely. And since Blogger does not provide any other templates that interest me, I'm moving on to WordPress. (Which has quite handily been able to import all my Blogger posts.)

That's right. You must alter your bookmarks, my dear fifteen blogreaders. Future posts will be found here, at sethholler.wordpress.com. Not too original, and I'm dropping the scholarship pun -- but how often did I really write about my original work in the academy, anyway? And perhaps now I won't get those random hits from ESL users whose Google searches indicate their interest in 'free schollership for college.'

Farewell, schollership.

A Prayer from Dr. Donne

Deliver me therefore, O my God, from these vain imaginations; that it is an overcurious thing, a dangerous thing, to come to that tenderness, that rawness, that scrupulousness, to fear every concupiscence, every offer of sin, that this suspicious and jealous diligence will turn to an inordinate dejection of spirit, and a diffidence in thy care and providence; but keep me still established, both in a constant assurance, that thou wilt speak to me at the beginning of every such sickness, at the approach of every such sin; and that, if I take knowledge of that voice then, and fly to thee, thou wilt preserve me from falling, or raise me again, when by natural infirmity I am fallen.

From Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, ch. 1, "The First Alteration, the First Grudging, of the Sickness." Here's my text.

More free Chesterton

PG today makes available Chesterton's A Short History of England (1917).

This is one of several English histories I mean to read; here's another, A Child's History of England (Dickens; 1850-3); and here's a third, The History of Britain, that Part especially now called England; from the first traditional Beginning, continued to the Norman Conquest (Milton; 1670).

Someday.

Russell D. Moore on Christian burial

Recognizing that cremation is sub-Christian doesn’t mean castigating grieving families as sinners. It doesn’t mean refusing to eat at the dining room table with Aunt Flossie’s urn perched on the mantle overhead. It doesn’t mean labeling the pastor who blesses a cremation service as a priest of Molech.

It simply means beginning a conversation about what it means to grieve as Christians and what it means to hope as Christians. It means reminding Christians that the dead in the graveyards behind our churches are “us” too. It means hoping that our Christian burial plots preach the same gospel that our Christian pulpits do.

Read the rest here.

Update: Just read a poem relevant to this topic. Donne's Divine Meditation 10:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better then thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.

Stanley Fish on politics and the classroom

...advocacy is just not what should be going on in a university.

Once advocacy is removed from the equation — once issues, including gay adoption, are objects of study rather than alternatives to be embraced — the beliefs, religious or otherwise, of either students or professors, become irrelevant.

A student assigned to study an issue must be equipped with the appropriate analytical skills. Acquiring and applying those skills in no way depend on political or ideological affiliations. If the assignment is to give an account of the dispute about gay adoption rather than to come down on one side or the other, two students with opposing views of the matter might very well produce the very same account. Academic performance and individual beliefs are independent variables. They have nothing to do with each other.

Read the whole article. A subscription to TimesSelect is required, but remember, you can now get free access to TS if you're in higher ed!

Perseverance of the Saints?

From 2 Peter 2 (ESV):

These ["false prophets"] are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: "The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire." [my italics]

Hmm.

more Anglican news

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

For a more detailed but less humorous explanation of recent developments, go here.

free New York TimesSelect for .edu

Cool. Here's the link to sign up.

(HT: Download Squad)

"What must I do to be saved?"

Wow.

On academic writing

David Damrosch, student (and teacher) of Gilgamesh, identifies academic prose as "coterie writing." A shrewd analogy.

...it is neither necessary nor desirable to dumb our projects down when writing for a general audience. At the same time, we need to write quite differently when we want to reach beyond the comforting confines of our disciplinary coteries. It is good to have a clear and vivid style, but equally, we have to retrain ourselves to write for readers who don't already know what we're talking about, and who need to be shown why they should care about the things we know and love so well.

From the Chronicle (HT: A&L Daily)

a spring break present from Google's Picasa

More storage. Community searches. Read about it here.

More on Milton's big screen debut

I expressed misgivings about this some months ago, and a recent article in the New York Times is not very encouraging. In the words of the CEO whose firm is co-financing the film, "if you get past the Milton of it all, and think about the greatest war that’s ever been fought, the story itself is pretty compelling."

Later in the article one of the brains behind the project admits, "it’s a war movie at the end of the day." I suppose that means we should expect less of Adam and Eve, whose story is most central to the epic, and more of Books 5 and 6, in which Raphael describes the pre-Genesis 1 battle initiated by Lucifer over the throne of God, with the Son eventually triumphing over Lucifer and banishing him and his cohorts to Hell--where the story begins in Book 1.

This should ease the Lexington-Memphis commute

"70 mph speed limit is passed". The old speed limit for KY interstate roads was 65.

another new blog

From the lady most dear to my heart: The Weight of Wings.

a cartoon by and about Dave Walker, but which describes me accurately enough

(Source)

Play it again, Joyce...

From today's A&L Daily: "Shortly before she died, Joyce Hatto played Beethoven's Les Adieux from a wheelchair at her Steinway. A brave spirit, perhaps. But also, alas, a thief and a fraud..."

Here's the entire article.

"The Ninety and Nine"

Working late last night on the computer, I listened to and appreciated anew The Ninety and Nine, the final jolly track on Andrew Peterson's first album, "Carried Along." I don't know if he wrote the words; they sound old. But I wouldn't put it past him.

There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold
But one was out on the hills away
Far off from the gates of gold
Away on the mountains, wild and bare
Away from the tender shepherd's care
Away from the tender shepherd's care

"Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine,
Are they not enough for Thee?"
But the shepherd made answer
"This of mine has wandered far from me
And though the road be rough and steep
I go to the desert to find my sheep
I go to the desert to find my sheep"

But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through
Ere He found His sheep that was lost
Out in the desert He heard its cry
Sick and helpless and ready to die
Sick and helpless and ready to die

But all through the mountains, thunder riven
And up from the rocky steep
There rose a glad cry at the gates of Heaven
"Rejoice, I have found my sheep!"
And the angels echoed around the throne
"Rejoice for the Lord brings back His own!
Rejoice for the Lord brings back His own!"

As I've pointed out before, we have much to learn outside of the contents of Holy Scripture. That idea keeps me in the academy, even though I'm not studying the Bible. Here's more on this same idea from one of my former professors.

don't miss the new sbemail

Available here.

What would Newman think of blogging?

It requires a great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant us in putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; and without such learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse, to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful result or any trustworthy conclusion.

- Idea of a University, ch. 6 (1852)

In defense of (and concern over) tradition

This is good. Really good. Excerpt:

What is the Church? It's the Body of Christ, the living expression of God's Word on this earth. Our call - our responsibility - as disciples is to let Christ live in us, through us, to protect and carefully pass on what we have been entrusted, to serve and love in His name, enlivened and empowered by the Spirit.

As human beings, our natural tendency is to want to make that as easy as possible for ourselves and to let the Spirit of the Age define us instead.

...

So I suppose my point is that no matter what our intentions, when we untether ourselves from tradition - in the broadest sense - we are putting ourselves in a place where there are no real directions and where the wind just blows and blows. We don't want to revisit past mistakes, but we do, it seems to me, want to be more aware of the reality that when we, say, give priests the freedom to make the liturgy what they want of it...they will. When we present children with a smorgasboard and say, "Well, it's up to you to find what's most meaningful..." they will. And it's probably not going to be Matthew 25. It's probably going to be PS3.

It's such a knotty dynamic, because all of those spiritual masters I quoted earlier would tell us, over and over again, through their words and their personal witness, that life with God - faith - is a freely spoken "yes" to the gracious invitation of God to rest in his embrace. It is not manipulated or forced or memorized.

But in this world, on this earth, we are not immediately able to say that "yes." We live in a complex, confusing world in which darkness calls us, as well. In which darkness would like us to be confused and stay that way and to not know, to never know, Who really made us, Who really calls us, and Who really gives us peace and joy.

In that context, I am thinking more and more that since things go haywire, and that darkness within and without is so pervasive, that it just makes sense - and is not a matter of "liberal" or "conservative" to let the Church be the place where things are clearly stated, and where worship is structured so the temptations of the egos that run it are not given any room to be served - we are free to take it all or leave it - but at least we will know where we stand.

David Mills on Alan Wolfe on the Modern Christian College

...but I want here only to note that every college and university has a statement of faith, though for the vast majority the statement remains completely unarticulated. (The propaganda colleges produce for the parents and the donors is both more abstract and more idealistic than the principles, the faith statement, by which they live their lives.)

And because they have not articulated their beliefs, their implicit statement of faith is almost certainly to some extent incoherent. In this the rigorously confessional Evangelical and Catholic colleges may claim superiority to their secular peers: they know what they believe, and have taken some trouble to work out what that means, and their both their principles and their application can be criticized.

Mills is responding to an article by Alan Wolfe. Read the rest of Mill's response here.

FT on the Anglican Communion

Jordan Hylden calls this week's meeting of the archbishops of the Anglican Communion "he single most promising opportunity since the English Reformation to ensure the long-term unity and orthodoxy of Anglican Christianity."

Read the rest he has to say here.

Newman on Justification (pt 1)

At the end of last semester, I vowed to myself to re-read (and re-read and re-read) St. Paul's epistle to the church in Rome, and try to learn it--not just the Apostle's words, though memorization is a happy byproduct--but what he meant.

Also last semester, I met John Henry Cardinal Newman, whose Idea of a University I have found (seriously) engrossing. Imagine my delight to find another book by Cardinal Newman: Lectures on Justification. I've read the first lecture ("Faith considered as the Instrumental Cause of Justification," in which Newman treats what he identifies as the Lutheran position on justification) and part of the twelfth lecture, "Faith viewed relatively to Rites and Works." The following is the first paragraph of the latter:

I NOW proceed to show that though we are justified, as St. Paul says, by faith, and, as our Articles and Homilies say, by faith only, nevertheless we are justified, as St. James says, by works; and to show in what sense this latter doctrine is true, and that, not only in the case of works of righteousness, but also of ritual services, such as Baptism, as St. Paul and St. Peter teach. Of course I do not forget St. Paul's declaration that "a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the Law," but he does not thereby assert that justification is independent of the deeds of the Gospel, as a few remarks will suffice to show.

I hope he keeps his word, and actually succeeds in "show[ing]" how we can wholly affirm, without strained interpretation, the letters of each apostle. My knowledge of Greek--the language in which both St. Paul and St. James wrote their epistles--is minimal, but I do know that each writer uses the same Greek words (or root words) for faith (pistis), justify (diakaioo), and works (ergon).

For those interested, the relevant verses from each apostle are (e.g.) Romans 3:20 and James 2:24. I'll post more on Newman as I continue reading.

the (recent) history of abortion

Women have turned to abortion to end unwanted pregnancies throughout the ages. In the U.S., induced abortion was common among Native Americans, and it was legal from colonial times to the middle of the 19th century. But unclean, primitive medical practices made it very dangerous. To protect women’s lives, laws against abortion began to be passed during the mid-1800s. But by the middle of the 20th century, cleaner, more advanced medical procedures made safe abortion possible. All U.S. laws against abortion were overturned in 1973 by the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. Today, abortion is legal nationwide and is one of the safest of all available medical procedures. (source)

"Women have turned to abortion to end unwanted pregnancies throughout the ages." That may be, but it doesn't make for a strong case for historical precedent to refer to less than 300 years of history.

Were 19th century abortion laws really passed to protect mothers from harm?

And, oh, that last sentence. Abortion probably is much safer for mothers now than it was in the past. But it is no safer for their unborn children.