Some improper speculation I stumbled into during morning devotions. I’m in Isaiah, slowly plodding through all of the old testament. This morning I came to the messianic prophecies in chapter 53. And I thought.
Why does the author speak of the messiah in the past tense?
Tags: anachronism, Christ, Isaiah, messiah, messianic, old testamnet, prophecy, prophets
To keep up Jacob and Adam’s late introduction streak alive, here I am with my own….
I am presently 21 years old, the oldest of five siblings, and the son of a wonderful mother and father. I was born in good ol’ North Dakota, but spent close to three-and-a-half early and formative years growing [...]
Tags: Africa, camping, camping hiking, Daniel Kessel, Dordt College, Facebook, further studies, History, homeschool, Introduction, landscape photography, Medieval philosophy, North Dakota, orphanage, Philosophy, reading material, Theology, theology and philosophy, Uganda
A few years back, I read Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. Harris is part of the so-called “New Atheist” movement, which asserts the falsehood of monotheism and the supremacy of human reason with as much vigor as Christian fundamentalists assert the inerrancy of the Bible. Richard [...]
The year of my birth also hosted the Jonestown massacre, the suicide and murder of 900 people who drank cyanide in Kool-Aid, the first successful In vitro fertilization, as well as, by extension, the first test-tube baby, and the national syndication of Garfield the Cat. From then on, it was destined to be down-hill.
Frequent [...]
Tags: Adam Schultz, Introduction
Thus, for Broch, while kitsch is the evil in the general value system as a whole, it is fallen—but not unredeemable. In contrast Seerveld doggedly implies that absolute categories of true art and kitsch have no overlap, that is that kitsch is of another sort than true art. Ironically, by allowing art to be evil, Broch allows for it to be reclaimed in a way that Seerveld’s seemingly more tolerant view cannot.
Tags: Art, Beauty, Broch, Fallen, Good, Kitsch, redemption, Seerveld, Value
Where true art is creative, kitsch plunders creative art, imitating its formulas even as it negates their efficacy. By rendering true art’s nature merely a set of conventions, kitsch produces a totalitization of those conventions. Therefore, for Broch, kitsch is not the same as bad art, (art that missed its calling in the positive value), but it establishes a formal value system all its own.
The character of universal truth is to be grounded in reality, what Broch calls “expanded naturalism” in which truth “show[s] the (inner or outer) world ‘as it really is.’” However, to leave Broch’s conception at this point is to doom its horizons to radically conservative empiricism in which the good functions only to defend and represent (re-present) the sensible world in which it finds itself.
Great discussion on Kenny’s post. The issue of freedom of religion is always touchy and easily generates a multiplicity of opinions. The Court, though it has dealt the relationship between freedom of speech and freedom of religion since the beginning, has no real definitive answer. While I agree that the Constitution is definitely a document [...]
Tags: constitution, first amendment, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, Holmes, interpretation, judges, law, Supreme Court
To preface this excerpt from a recent paper of mind, I’d like to discribe the relevance of the topic of Critical Thinking in Education.
Today I had the honor of listening to Bible Institute of Los Angeles professor John Mark Reynolds speak to local high school teachers about Critical Thinking. As the school embarks on a [...]
“When Plato said that if I’d gone to the Sicilian court as I was invited, I wouldn’t have to wash lettuce for a living, I replied that if he washed lettuce for a living, he wouldn’t have had to go to the Sicilian court.”
So Diogenes of Sinope vindicated a life of philosophy among the menial, [...]
