First Sunday in Advent

‘Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, – “Wait and hope”.’
- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
‘A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes… and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to [...]

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Thanksgiving in Missouri

We’re all just back from Republic, Missouri, where we spent Jacob’s first Thanksgiving at the home of his great-grandparents and great-aunt. Highlights of the trip: a visit to the original Bass Pro Shop in Springfield, a tour of the home in Mansfield where Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote all of the Little House books, [...]

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Reign of Christ

‘…[W]ith their unseeing eyes, the Romans had rightly perceived a radical and dangerous subversion… an aspiration for the world more revolutionary, a disturbance of the status quo more seismic, an allegiance more disloyal, a menace more intimidating, than any program which simply meets force with force and matches loveless injustice with loveless vengeance. Here is [...]

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Luigi Zingales is helpful.

I’ve been finding VoxEU.org a very good source of timely analysis of all the recent economic goings-on.  If you haven’t already taken a look at the free e-book they published with advice for G20 leaders, for instance, it’s worth a read.  And today, Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago continues a series of strong [...]

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The internet is destroying our social capital.

OK, that might be an exaggeration.
In my first game theory course we talked about games of coordination, including ones in which two players could coordinate their actions without being able to talk to each other if there were one particularly salient strategy that stood out as the ‘obvious’ one.  If I were to tell you, [...]

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Twenty-seventh Sunday after Pentecost

‘…We must resist the temptation to speak of reconciliation; we must, if we are to be honest with ourselves, resist any “blessed rage” for order, or closure, in human life. In order to take our own fragility seriously enough, in order to dwell long enough with the reality of human suffering, we must simply accept [...]

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Theology and Social Theory, Introduction

In the introduction to Theology and Social Theory Milbank addresses his book to theologians and social theorists.  To social theorists Milbank intends to demonstrate that the governing assumptions of modern, secular social theory are at variance with orthodox Christian positions, and moreover that they are not more rational than those positions.  To theologians he offers [...]

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The gift that keeps on giving

James Surowiecki makes (another) good point:

Do We Have to Save G.M. Because We Let Lehman Fail?

While I fully understand the arguments against bailing out General Motors and Ford, I also think at this point letting them go under would have a devastating impact on both the financial markets and the real economy. And that means, [...]

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Theology and Social Theory, Preface to the 2d. Ed.

Jonathan and I have recently decided to read through John Milbank’s seminal work of the Radical Orthodoxy movement, Theology and Social Theory.  As Jonathan writes,
Because of the extremely turgid prose that RO elects to use (it remains unclear to me why cultural studies/social theory and the theological reflection that employs these disciplines insist upon neologism [...]

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On the analogia entis

Jonathan and I have begun to read together the seminal work of Radical Orthodoxy, John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory.  We’ve decided to interact via dueling blog posts; he posted the first last week and I’ll soon be posting my response on his blog (as well as copying his post and my response here).  At [...]

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