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Tag Archives: John Calvin
Blogging Brian Greene’s New Book, “The Hidden Reality”
Physicist Brian Greene’s new book just came out, and it’s exceptional. If you want the skinny on what hidden realities there might be behind and beyond our own, you can safely set aside the Bible and just read Brian Greene. And damn he … Continue reading
Lancaster, California: A City without a Bookstore
Lancaster, California’s only general purpose bookstore—serving a city of close to 200,000 people—closed a couple of weeks ago. It was a Waldenbooks, and, ironically, it shut down within about a week of the city’s mayor—R. Rex Parris—making this comment to a gathering of 160 … Continue reading
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Tagged Antelope Valley Press, books, bookstores, Christianity, Henry David Thoreau, Jesus, John Calvin, r. rex parris, reading, thoreau, walden, waldenbooks
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G.K Chesterton’s Defense of Mysticism and Poetry
The Catholic essayist, G.K. Chesterton, in the second chapter of his 1908 book, Orthodoxy , had the interesting and counterintuitive idea that mysticism and poetry do not cause a person to run the risk of going mad, but that doing mathematics … Continue reading
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Tagged g.k. chesterton, John Calvin, mathematics, mysticism, poems, poetry, religion, science, twilight, writing
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Caelius Secundus Curio and Laelius Socinus: Two Heroic 16th Century Resisters of John Calvin
The following appears on page 478 of Will Durant’s wonderful history of the Reformation (which you can find at Amazon here): Calvin faced on the left a group of radicals recently arrived in Switzerland from Counter Reformation Italy. Caelius Secundus Curio, … Continue reading
Who is Servetus the Evangelical? Alvin Plantinga?
We’re about to find out because, at his website, he has announced that he will drop his pseudonym, and reveal his true name, on Thursday, November 19, 2009. The rather well know biblical scholar, James Tabor, says of Servetus the Evangelical: … Continue reading
The Devil Trying to Disrupt and Discourage the Heroic Vitalist
This Albrecht Durer drawing from 1513 made me think of John Calvin (who was born in 1509). I like Durer’s depiction of the devil on the left side of the drawing, with his Medusa-echoing snake hair and taunting display of … Continue reading
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Tagged 16th century, Albrecht Durer, Apollo, armor, Calvin, Calvinism, Dionysus, faith, John Calvin, mars hill, Satan, the devil
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John Calvin: Jesus’s Bulldog?
In the 19th century Charles Darwin had a bulldog (T.H. Huxley), but in the 16th century Jesus had a bulldog too. And this bulldog didn’t just bite rhetorically. His name was John Calvin, and under the right circumstances he had no compunction about literally taking your head … Continue reading
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Tagged bulldogs, Calvinism, Christianity, free will, hell, Jesus, John Calvin, mars hill, predestination, reformed calvinism
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It’s Not Just the 200th Anniversary of Charles Darwin’s Birth, It’s Also the 500th Anniversary of John Calvin’s!
John Calvin was born 500 years ago, in 1509, but I have a hard time understanding what, exactly, we should celebrate about it, or how to celebrate it. John Calvin, afterall, looked askance at merriment, drinking, and dancing, so what exactly do you do to … Continue reading
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Tagged authoritarianism, Calvinism, Charles Darwin, Christianity, democracy, heresy, history, Jesus, John Calvin, reformed calvinist, witchcraft
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Can an Authoritarian Tree Produce Good Fruit? Thinking about John Calvin’s Geneva
After Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth? Here’s the historian Will Durant, from his book The Reformation (1957, pp. 473-474), on what John Calvin’s Geneva was like in the 16th century: Calvin himself, austere and severe, dreamed of a community … Continue reading
John Calvin’s Geneva: A Little Reminder of What It’s Like to Live in a World Where Church and State are Combined
I’m kind of weirded out by people who express nostalgia for John Calvin, and call themselves admirers of his. I think it a useful correction to this nostalgia to actually recall what it was like, exactly, to live in John … Continue reading
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Tagged 16th century, apologetics, atheist, Calvinism, Christianity, evangelicals, geneva, George Bush, Jesus, John Calvin, john calvin's geneva
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Stanley Fish on the Cross of Doubt
The religions I know are about nothing but doubt and dissent, and the struggles of faith, the dark night of the soul, feelings of unworthiness, serial backsliding, the abyss of despair. Whether it is the book of Job, the Confessions … Continue reading
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Tagged backsliding, Book of Job, despair, doubt, Job, John Calvin, life, stanley fish, the cross, the dark night of the soul
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Philosopher David Sosa on Free Will v. Determinism
As portrayed in the critically acclaimed documentary, Waking Life:
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Tagged block universe, david sosa, determinism, free will, God, John Calvin, law, philosophy, physics, psychology, quantum physics
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