classics digests, reflections and reviews
Connexion of the Sensible and the Abstract Some things are perceived by the senses immediately, some mediately, with the intervention of others. The latter may be signified and suggested to the mind by sensible marks, with which they have an arbitrary connexion. For instance, in reading a book, what I immediately perceive are the letters; but mediately, or by means of these, the notions of justice, virtue, truth, etc. Philosophers […]
Read more“Only he who does not believe in God can believe that men, who are of his own kind, may order his life so as to make it better.” “Men see that there is something wrong with their life and endeavor in some way to improve it…But to improve oneself, one must first admit that one lacks goodness, and this is annoying. And they turn all their attention away from that […]
Read moreA story of Tolstoy was related by Prof. Irwin Weil [1]: A young Jewish man wrote to Tolstoy a few months before the latter died, and asked how a Jew could believe his teachings which were based on the words of Jesus Christ. Tolstoy replied, “The words of Christ are not important and applicable because they were said by Christ, on the contrary, they were said by Christ because they […]
Read moreIdeally, a translation should give the readers of the Bible in their own language the same interpretive options that a reader of the original will have. I’ve been struggling with a troubling phenomenon in public discourse in the past two years, namely, the abuse of authority in interpretation. The above quote from a recent blog post by Dr. Daniel B. Wallace on Bible translation caught my attention, because it speaks directly […]
Read moreAn online acquaintance recently sent me a private message recommending a Catholic apologetics book — my post on sola scriptura was an upshot of a debate with her and a few others. I thanked her for the recommendation, but politely declined, saying that I had a very long to-read list and wouldn’t have time for it. Her reply suggested that I was not “open-minded enough”. I was a little taken aback, […]
Read moreI asked, “Let us suppose, sir, that after you have left this sorry vale, you actually found yourself in heaven, standing before the Throne. There, in all his glory, sat the Lord—not Lord Russell, sir: God.” Russell winced. “What would you think?” “I would think I was dreaming.” “But suppose you realized you were not? Suppose that there, before your very eyes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was God. […]
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Perhaps because I read Crime and Punishment after Brothers Karamazov, viz. in the reverse order in which Dostoevsky wrote them, I find the former psychologically more coherent, more relatable, than the latter, but philosophically less thought-provoking. It is almost as if Dostoevsky is working things out through his writings. When one reads them in the reverse order, like reading the end of a mystery novel first, the element of wonder is […]
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