I keep seeing the phrase written in chalk on the walkway at UTC:  "Your Body Your Rules".  It seems to have been written in contradiction to other things written elsewhere on the walkway, offering help for young ladies with unwanted pregnancies and affirming the good of life and children. "Your Body Your Rules" is a lie.  To begin with, we did not make ourselves.  We have been made by the Creator and therefore our bodies, just like the rest of creation, belong to him - not us.  Secondly, our Creator has given us rules.  They are called the Ten Commandments.  And those Ten Commandments tell us that we are not to indulge in sex outside of marriage (another thing initiated by the Creator and not us), nor are we to murder. This whole "it's my body and no one can tell me what to do with it" idea is a recipe for a dysfunctional and wrecked life - not to mention death.  I wish these people could see that they are driving away from themselves the v...

"I learned that he that will be a hero will barely be a man, that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.  In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it.  Indeed, my ideal soon became my life, whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal."  Anodos, Phantastes .

From Doug Wilson’s Blog and Mablog e-mail today: “Far from providing a true spiritual counterculture, we have adopted the demented view that there isn’t anything the world can do that will not result in an evangelical knock-off.”

Dr. Hampton in English class today had the students meditating upon their mortality and how in all probability everything that they ever write will be forgotten.  Most authors are.  "Death wins every time."  The gloom was palpable. I responded by agreeing with him on a Solomonic-Ecclesiastes level.  We know as historians that nearly all of what has been said and done in antiquity is gone.  However, if the New Testament is true, our works can be remembered; God will not forget them.  And their is a rumor (using Lewis' language here) that there is another world to come and what is said and done here will be manifest there and, if it is worthy, it will be part of the glory to come. Hampton spoke of how we all desire to be remembered, even to have glory.  Mankind seeks glory because mankind was made for glory.  A few out of all humanity are remembered and given glory by their peers, but that glory will also be swallowed up by death.  Lasti...

Something that’s been on my heart for a while: Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with the Gods.

I think Doug does a great job here, explaining the nature of the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics.  I am interested in the reaction of Roman Catholics to this; I would like to know if they think Doug accurately represents their view of justification - at least the Tridentine view. Do notice, however, that Benedict agrees that we are justified by faith alone.  His concern is that we recognize the particular quality of the faith that receives the grace of justification.  There is certainly nothing wrong with his concern.  It is the concern of St. James in his epistle.  It is the place at which we argue that Paul and James agree.  Pope Benedict: "Being just simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary. For this reason Luther's phrase: "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being uni...