The Masters

Edwards and the Angels

Somewhere I read that Jonathan Edwards thought that God has chosen the precise number of people required to replace the fallen angels.  I am not sure what he bases that on, but even if not substantiated the idea highlights the fact that we are a very small part of a very large affair.  Although what has been done in our small corner has proven decisive of the final outcome.

Books and Man’s Best Friend

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”

Groucho Marx

The Purpose of Husbands

“Husbands were made to be talked to. It helps them concentrate their minds on what they’re reading…”

Mrs. Dimble in That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Total Truth

I picked up a lot of books in the States. Thankfully, we got a nice person to check us in on the LAN Chile flight (Chilenos always seem to be nice) so overweight charges didn’t kill us.

I am really excited about a book I have been hearing about for awhile. Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey is great book on forming a biblical world view. Pearcey is a Francis Schaeffer disciple. She does a good job of updating his apologetics for the 21st century. My two daughters are both reading it and enjoying it very much.

I can't get Amazon to work at the moment to give you the link, but it is worth buying for a college student or bright high schooler - or for yourself.

Trafalgar

Al Mohler points out that today is the bicentennial anniversary of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.  Nelson was a warrior of genius and apparently a first-rate cad in his personal life.  I bought Edgar Vincent’s book Nelson: Love & Fame a few years ago.  It was a great read. The battles of the Nile, Copenhagen and of course Trafalgar are described in riveting detail.  You have to work through a lot of unappealing details of his personal life in between.

Mohler links to some articles about the occasion.  The best is the one by John Keegan who Mohler describes as “Britain’s premier military historian”.  I have a couple of books by Keegan that are very good.  One is The Price of Admiralty and the other is about World War 1.  I can’t remember the title and I can’t find it right now because my kids keep swiping it for their schoolwork.

Good Dogs Go to Heaven

C. S. Lewis thought that certain animals might go to heaven.

Really.

I would like to agree with him.  If I were to be rigorous about the matter I probably couldn’t do better than a certain hopeful agnosticism.  His conclusions are the product of a series of speculations, but I have to say that I find them very attractive.  If someone were to ask me if the Bible says anything about animal immortality I would have to say no.  But I do enjoy telling my family that Abigail (click to enlarge Abigail) might go to heaven.  They are very sceptical and are not swayed even when I invoke Lewis’s authority.

Paul Johnson and the Third World

Here is another quote mined from Paul Johnson’s Modern Time’s.  I appreciate his insightful and iconoclastic approach to most subjects.  The last sentence made me chuckle.

C. S. Lewis and Psychology

As a missionary and pastor I have become ever more antagonistic towards secular psychology and frustrated with approaches to Christian counseling that do little more than scotch tape a few Bible verses to the latest secular theory.  Like anyone else, I like things that confirm me in my biases so you can imagine how much I enjoyed this passage from C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves.  Lewis is actually a little more open to some aspects of psychoanalysis than I am.  But he wrote at a time before it was fairly discredited.

Modern Times

They say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.  Fair enough.  But you can often judge a book by its opening sentence or paragraph.  If an author can write a great first paragraph the book is usually worth reading.  My daughter, Sarah, gave me a couple of books by Paul Johnson for Christmas two years ago.  I read one, Intellectuals, immediately.  It was great.  He trashes everyone from Rousseau to Chomsky.  But I just recently finished Modern Times.  Johnson begins the book like this:

The modern world began on 29 May 1919 when photographs of a solar eclipse, taken on the island of Principe off West Africa and at Sobral in Brazil, confirmed a new theory of the universe.

The rest of the book is just as good.  The theory confirmed was, of course, Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Devil Food

One of the advantages of reading more than one book at a time is the occasional cross-pollenization that occurs.  Something in one book will illuminate something in another.  For example, I am reading The Screwtape Letters. It is a good book, of course.  I am not sure what Clive Staples thought of the perseverance of the saints, but there are some wonderful passages.  Take this one from letter 8: