Moses, Meteors, Tobacco and Grace
I think my dog Moses just had his first experience chewing tobacco. I was trying to put together thoughts for a lecture I’m giving on Harry Potter in a couple of days at the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University, and I decided to go outside, smoke a cigar (Oliva Serie V), and hope to catch a few earlier Leonid meteors from the limited view I have on the front porch of my house here in the city. No such luck with meteors, but several idea for Friday’s talk came to mind. Moses was sitting with me on the porch, and about halfway through my cigar, I heard him chewing on something. It was dark, but I’m pretty sure it was the end of the cigar

Art and Criticism
John Gardner, from On Moral Fiction: [E]ven at its best, criticism – including the criticism set down by poets and novelists, composers, pinters, sculptors, dancers, and photographers – is easier than authentic art to grasp and treat as immutable doctrine. Depending as it does on logic and scheme, on arguments well argued, criticism uses parts of the mind that are more readily available to us than are the faculties required by art.

The Death of Apologetics Obsession
From an article at Patrol Mag: But so many twenty-somethings are not calling themselves “post-evangelical” because they know too little theology or have put too small an effort into synthesizing it with reality. They have come from the most apologetics-obsessed generation of Christians in American history, and have realized that many of their prepared answers are for questions that no one is asking. Adrift in the cultural sea, many turned to traditions and theological systems of the past, only to find those similarly unequipped to address the questions of our time. The only choice has been to be

This God
Quoted by @JaredCWilson on Twitter today: “We trust not because ‘a God’ exists, but because this God exists.” — C.S. Lewis

Baptism and Assurance
“We must not try to decide what is God’s will by prying into His secret counsel, when He has made it plain to us by external signs.” (John Calvin on 1 Timothy 2) “Whenever there is any question of forgiveness of sins, we must flee to Baptism and from it seek a confirmation of forgiveness. For as God reconciles us to himself by the daily promises of the Gospel, so the belief and certainty of this reconciliation, which is daily repeated even to the end of life, he seals to us by Baptism.” (John Calvin, Antidote to the Council of Trent) (HT to Mark Traphagen via Twitter)