What kind of man is this?
Speaking of the founder of Christianity Schaff writes:
"All attempts to derive his doctrine from any of the existing schools and sects have utterly failed. He never referred to the traditions of the elders except to oppose them. From the Pharisees and Sadducees he differed alike, and provoked their deadly hostility. He was independent of human learning and literature, of schools and parties. He taught the world as one who owed nothing to the world. He came down from heaven and spoke out of the fullness of his personal intercourse with the Great Jehovah."Indeed, so sublime and insightful. Christ was not a mere "learned man;" approaching him was not like listening to Platinga, Kelsey, Einstein, Plato, nor Dostoyevsky even. For Christ was a man not of learning in the human sense, rather Christ on account of Jehovah, spake as one having authority and knowledge: an authority not earned by rising in human ranks of class, or education, but an authority from God Almighty.
How awesome is His name? Can we not now better understand the crowds when they asked themselves, "From whence hath this man these things?" or "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" (Mark 6 and Matthew 13 respectively) Christ did owe the world nothing, all the more why we owe Him everything.
Tolkien would be proud?
Gosh, after reading this great review in the LA Times I am more excited than ever to see the first installment of Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings.
Evidently director Peter Jackson has realized his dream well...it seems, quite importantly, that he too has been a fan of the book for years, and it was that zeal that carried over into his dedication to produce a film worthy of Tolkien's name. Here are a couple very interesting snippets from the review:
An unprecedented three feature films shot simultaneously in 274 days spread over 15 months at a cost of nearly $300 million are enough to get anyone's attention. Not to mention 26,000 extras and a special foam latexing oven for baking prosthetic devices—including 1,600 pairs of feet and ears—that ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including Christmas and New Year's Day.It seems we Americans finally have a movie worth all the hype! Unlike, hechem, this "first installment." For the record, I'm still giving Lucas the benefit of the doubt with Episode II: I'm trusting that he has learned from his Episode I follies, and will now make Episode II a movie worthy of the title Star Wars.
Those figures fascinate but, as directed by Peter Jackson, "The Fellowship of the Ring" makes you forget all about them. Made with intelligence, imagination, passion and skill, propulsively paced and shot through with an aged-in-oak sense of wonder, the trilogy's first film so thrillingly catches us up in its sweeping story that nothing matters but the vivid and compelling events unfolding on the screen.
As director, co-producer and co-writer, Jackson did everything with an eye to serving the story, to enhancing the texture of its reality. That includes having characters speaking in one of the elfish languages when appropriate (with subtitles), using as many as nine individual units to shoot in the remotest and most strangely scenic corners of New Zealand (director Jackson's home) and doing things like planting, a year before shooting was to begin, 5,000 cubic meters of appropriate vegetation in the part of the country selected to be the hobbits' home area.
The most important thing Jackson has done, however, is pay attention to character...
Of Church History
Diodorus says of Church history:
[Church history is] the handmaid of providence, the priestess of truth, and the mother of wisdom.Schaff accords:
Church history is no mere curiosity shop. Its facts are not dry bones, but embody living realities, the general principles and laws for our own guidance and action. Who studies Church history studies Christianity itself in all its phases, and human nature under the influence of Christianity as it now is, and will be to the end of time.
Radiohead making waves
How can a movie that opens with Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place" (off their Kid A album) be so bad? Regardless of your thoughts about the movie, the soundtrack is quite impressive. The movie itself offers Radiohead fans at least two moments where they can inwardly smile to themselves (that, "I'm in the know" smile). Not only does the movie feature Radiohead's music twice throughout the film (not small clips either), but there is a scene where Penelope Cruz asks Tom Cruise what CD he'd like to hear, "Jeff Buckley or....." I can't remember the other choice; probably because I was so glad the director gave such a great plug to Mr. Buckley. Anyway, Jeff Buckley is one of Thom Yorke's favorite artists, and an artist I'm getting more fond of as time goes by.
The movie is worth the matinee price-- interesting until the end, but the music is worth much more: don't buy the soundtrack, buy Kid A, or Amnesiac.
Bush blasts those who don't believe the OBL video
In the era where all "conspiracy theorists" are labeled as morons and radicals the world still has those persons who are willing to come out and yell "conspiracy" without flinching.
What's worse is that a much more insidious "conspiracy theory" mentality exists in the hallowed halls of the United State's most trusted and respected news agencies. Those very agencies that are so quick to label conspiracy theorists as "fringe" and "extremist" are themselves all too ready to accept the potentiality of a "conspiracy theory," especially with a Republican President. For instance, In this article MSN reporters, (CNN journalists), when describing Osama Bin Laden, label him an "alleged terrorist" and the one sought for "his alleged involvement with the September eleventh attacks."
These journalists, in their liberal blinded "objectivism," think of themselves as saviors of truth, when all they are doing in actuality is catering to the true radicals: those Islamic persons who claim OBL's innocence.
If you don't make time to read you won't have the time nor the tools to write. ~~Stephen King, author of 34 or more books. Hmmm.
?
Is it just me, or is Earnest Hemingway really boring to read?
Maybe I'm just missing something...not trying hard enough...maybe?
Hesse
Having just finished Herman Hesse's Siddhartha I can now say with certainty what I always thought due to an educated guess. I had always heard that Hesse was a great existentialist, and that Siddhartha was a superb place to find the "gospel" presentation of existentialism. On that general understanding of the work I had assumed, based on my knowledge of existentialism in general, and perhaps on my knowledge of the characters of those inidviduals who recommended the book, that the book would reveal existentialism in no better manner than the humanistic philosophy would allow. In short, having read Sarte and Camus, I thought that I knew existentialism well enough to dismiss it as having little credence.
Well, whomever they were from whom I had always heard the praise of Siddhartha, they were right: I did find existentialism in all its naked glory.
The funny thing is, I found myself no more persuaded by the ideas than I had been after reading Camus' The Stranger, or Jean Paul's The Wall. In fact, it seemed to me that Hesse, unwittingly, reaveals just how simplistic, sophomoric, and self-indulgent existentialism really is. I saw that existentialism offers no explanation of the world, or our beginnings, or our future. It offers nothing by way of salvation from sin, nor even an acknowledgment that sin is a reality. There is no fear of God, and as a result there is anything but an attatched ethic.
Certainly these considerations do not logically dismiss existentialism from coherence, but in my mind they help demonstrate what is a dismal commentary on the depth of existentialism: a small puddle after a light rain, soon dried in the blistering sun of True Religion. Though I found the short book adequately amusing, I was far from impressed (even from a purely literary perspective); a second read does not seem likely to reveal anything more, which is a criteria met, it seems, by all great literature.
Didn't Herman win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in Siddhartha? Gosh, let's raise the bar.