I just came across a NPR report that Pope Francis rejects the death penalty on the ground that “it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and is leading the Catholic Church to work for its abolition worldwide.[1] Coincidentally, I recently appealed to “the dignity of the person” in a heated online exchange with a self-professed Christian, who treated me repeatedly with hostility and scorn. I asked, […]
Read moreLatest Post
Secrets of Creativity: I. Rodin’s Concentration
Then he no longer spoke. He would step forward, then retreat, look at the figure in a mirror, mutter and utter unintelligible sounds, make changes and corrections. His eyes, which at table had been amiably inattentive, now flashed with strange lights, and he seemed to have grown larger and younger. He worked, worked, worked, with the entire passion and force of his heavy body; whenever he stepped forward or back […]
Read more
Stefan Zweig: The World of Yesterday
T. S. Eliot writes that culture is what makes life worth living. Zweig drives that point home with his haunting memoirs, and his own life. He committed suicide together with his wife shortly after finishing his memoirs. European culture had been irrevocably lost to him, and life without culture was not worth living. The act of writing the memoirs was a heroic attempt to preserve European culture, which was preserved […]
Read moreSuffering and Christian Hope: IV. Confronted with Frailty and Mortality
Your hands have made me and fashioned me, An intricate unity; Yet You would destroy me. Remember, I pray, that You have made me like clay. And will You turn me into dust again? —Job 10:8-9 (NKJV) When I received news yesterday of an acquaintance’s being diagnosed with and treated for cancer, that verse in Job 10 came to me. When Job received news that all his children had died […]
Read moreFrancis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning II
Divine and Kingly Glory Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, “The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of […]
Read moreFrancis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning
Nothing can fill, much less extend the soul of man, but God and the contemplation of God. — Francis Bacon In Defence of the Pursuit of Knowledge It was not the pure knowledge of Nature and universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did give names unto other creatures in Paradise as they were brought before him according unto their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the fall; but […]
Read more
Exploring LDAB: VI. Earliest Old Testament Manuscripts
The following table lists the earliest dated manuscripts of all 39 books of the Old Testament, sorted in ascending order by the date assigned according to LDAB[1]. To be consistent with the Hebrew Bible, which consists of 24 books, the twelve minor prophets, including Amos, Habakkuk, Haggai, Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Malachi,Micah, Nahum, Obadiah, Zechariah and Zephaniah, are listed as one book. 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and […]
Read more