A Thinking Reed

  • Rand Paul’s top-down conservatism

    Continuing the grand congressional tradition of monkeying with local D.C. affairs, supposedly libertarian G.O.P. senator Rand Paul has introduced amendments to a bill granting the District budget autonomy that would dictate city policies on guns, abortion, and unions. From the Washington Post: One Paul amendment would require the District to allow residents to obtain concealed…

  • Skepticism, orthodoxy, and the life of faith

    Ben Myers at Faith and Theology wrote a post recently on the Virgin Birth in which he made the case for accepting the historic faith of the church rather than criticizing beliefs that may not seem to pass the test of critical historical investigation. “It’s a good thing to believe something that you didn’t invent…

  • Tidbits from C.S. Lewis

    As my earlier post may have suggested, I’ve been dipping into C.S. Lewis’s letters. Here are a few quotes that struck me: “I quite agree with what you say about buying books, and love the planning and scheming beforehand, and if they come by post, finding the neat little parcel waiting for you on the…

  • Political purism and playing the long game

    Garry Wills wrote a good response to the video from Harvard Law professor Roberto Unger calling for the “defeat” of Barack Obama. Unger, who is invariably billed as Obama’s “former professor” (according to Wills he taught Obama in two classes at HLS), maintains that Obama has “failed to advance the progressive cause in the United States.” Unger’s video has…

  • C.S. Lewis on Jesus’ fear of death

    In 1932, C.S. Lewis wrote a letter to his good friend Owen Barfield on the topic of Jesus’ fear of death, particularly as presented in the Garden of Gethsemane scenes in the gospels. Barfield was apparently troubled by the idea that the Son of God should’ve experienced such terror in the face of death when…

  • Stone Temple Pilots, “Down”

  • Human origins, sin, and “fiduciary” atonement

    This article by theologian George L. Murphy today is a very helpful discussion of how an evolutionary understanding of human origins affects the Christian doctrines of sin and salvation. Murphy begins by arguing that the evolutionary account is more consistent with a broadly “Eastern” view of original sin (Irenaeus) than with a “Western” one (Augustine).…

  • Torche, “Snakes Are Charmed”

    More from their new (and great) album “Harmonicraft”:

  • The fog of (just) war: more on just war and the “kill list”

    To follow up a bit on the last post, here’s a good piece published in Boston Review by Georgetown law professor David Luban, looking at the “drone war” more broadly in the context of just war theory. Luban homes in on some of the thornier issues surrounding the targeted killing program: distinguishing between combatants and…

  • Can we know if our wars are just?

    This post by Kelley Vlahos at The American Conservative looks at attempts to assess the number of civilians killed by U.S. “drones” in Pakistan and Yemen. She notes that the Obama administration has not exactly been forthcoming with estimates of the number of civilians killed–either because they aren’t tracking it or aren’t willing to make…