One key problem that seems to lurk in many students' minds is this cultural stereotype of what I once heard CNN describe as "the eternal war between science and religion." Now, if you know anything about the history of science, not only do you know that this perceived conflict only goes back to the philosophers who proclaimed their anti-Christian ( Read more... )

I was interested to see this notice on a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople the other day. Bartholomew I got big points, I thought, for his prayer-style overtures to the Pope. But there are a couple of interesting nuggets of the Eastern Christian perspective of Western Christians in ( Read more... )

John Cavadini, my mentor as a Master's student at Notre Dame and now the Chair of the Department of Theology there, has written what Michel Barnes said might be the best thing he's ever written on Augustine. The two of them are both Augustine scholars, and John seems to be here in much the same L'Enfant terrible mode I've seen Barnes and his ( Read more... )

Avery Dulles published this useful article, "God and Evolution" in the October 2007 issue of First Things. I'm calling it "useful" because it seems, from my first reading of it, to very ably summarize the last two years' discussion on the intersection of the disciplines of evolutionary biology, philosophy, and theology. First Things was ( Read more... )

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My students read the following article - a set of book reviews, actually - by my namesake Michael Novak for this past Friday, in conjunction with a lesson on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. In general, I wanted to parallel the task of ancient and today's Christians in preparing positive articulations of the faith in response to some form of ( Read more... )

This is the article I've been opening my Introduction to Theology course with, these two semesters. I've alluded to it before, and linked to it, but First Things, the journal in which it appeared, is now reformatting their website and this is no longer accessible to non-subscribers, and so I thought I'd directly copy it into my journal ( Read more... )

The Feast of Lewis.

Sick. I've had a lung/throat thing going since Sunday. Nothing feverish, but definitely infected and woozy. Attention span for paper research that I do find fascinating? Nearly zero. Attention span for the Batman's No Man's Land saga? Nearly overwhelming.


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Every once in a while, you read an article or essay and just think, "Damn.... I wish I had written that." A few months ago, somewhere in here, I made a passing comment about how - as a scholar of the history of ideas, and one who has come to specialize even more strongly in theology and its history - the current publishing fad of screaming of ( Read more... )

I just excited myself by hatching up this assignment on the Wisdom Literature for my Intro to Theology class as we continue our mad dash through everything. I think the discussion coming out of this could be pretty cool. Hey All ( Read more... )