The ESV Study Bible by Crossway

When I became a Christian at Florida State University in the late 80′s, I bought the Bible I saw most of my InterVarsity Christian Fellowship friends carrying.  It was the NIV Student Bible with notes by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford.  Wonderful Bible, especially for a new Christian.  Every time I had a big question, there was some kind of comment there that didn’t downplay the complexity.  Got a college student?  The NIV Student Bible is perfect.

A few months ago, I left that Bible (or its successor since I may have replaced it once) on the top of my minivan and drove off.  When I retraced my route, it was nowhere to be found.  The university president and New Testament scholar Robert Sloan advised me to get a New American Standard Bible, which I did.  I bought the one with wide margins by Zondervan.  I really like that Bible for taking notes.  I looked at a few that offer the room to take notes.  To me, the Zondervan model is the most realistic about the space you need for writing.

But then, Crossway sent me their ESV Study Bible.  Wow.  Each page has several footnotes with clear, highly readable background and explanatory material.  The Crossway team clearly put a lot of work into this Bible and the brisk sales attest that their effort bore fruit.  I’m now torn as to which Bible I want to use.  I’ve carried the ESV Study Bible more lately because it can really help clarify things when a dispute arises.

The best down to earth compliment I can give the ESV Study Bible is that I originally thought I’d re-gift the Bible to a friend, but after digging in and trying it out, I decided I needed to keep it.  Thumbs up.

(Disclaimer:  I’m a Crossway author with a book coming out this August, but I wouldn’t recommend this Bible unless I liked it.)

Heart Locked in a Gran Torino

Gran Torino is good, really good.  For a long time, I’ve heard writers and film directors talk about the importance of showing people something instead of telling them.  The best films are those that set a scene which demonstrates a fundamental truth about people’s lives instead of having some character give a dramatic speech spilling out an entire philosophy of HOW IT IS and HOW IT OUGHT TO BE.  Gran Torino succeeds on that score.  Eastwood as the director working from a masterful script rolls out scene after scene revealing truths about our lives to us.

Is this a film, which the trailer portrays, in which we get to see Eastwood doing his Dirty Harry thing?  There is some of that.  No question.  That’s what I went to see.  But Gran Torino rewarded me with a deep reflection on America, on faith, on family, on immigration, on aging, and on heroism.  Who are we as Americans?  We’re immigrants.  To some degree we’re nationalistic, chauvinistic, racist, aggressive.  But there’s something else about us, too.  We tend to come out of the right side of things.  We love justice more than anything else.  Gran Torino shows us all of that.

Nothing preachy here.  Just solid, solid storytelling.  Everything works.  I can’t imagine anyone seeing this movie and feeling disappointed, as I did with the much splashier and showier Quantum of Solace, which left me empty and relatively unthrilled.

Making Men Moral: A Conference

Robert P. George is arguably the most potent conservative in the academic firmament.  Through his scholarship and the outstanding programs of the James Madison program at Princeton University, George has contributed powerfully to the philosophical debate over the sanctity of life, marriage, and religion in the public square.

Next month, Union University in Jackson, Tennessee is holding a conference in honor of the 15th anniversary of the publication of George’s outstanding book Making Men Moral. The roster of speakers is quite good.  In addition to Professor George, Hadley Arkes, James Stoner, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and many others will be in attendance. I’m not certain of it, but Francis Beckwith may also be there.

Richard John Neuhaus had been slated to attend before his death last week.  I imagine most of those attending this conference will be his friends and admirers.  Informal tributes may bloom.

For those who don’t remember, Union University is the school that rebounded so admirably from a devastating tornado strike last year.

Check out the website for the conference here.

From Miracle on Ice to Miracle on the Hudson

Many of us remember the U.S. victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid.  It came at a good time.

We all know the story.  The 1970′s had been hard on America.  We were beginning to look like losers buffetted by economic uncertainty, high inflation and unemployment, the loss of prestige on the international stage, the looming threat of nuclear war . . .

We often point to Ronald Reagan’s election as where it all turned around, but that hockey game at the Olympics, a moment when Americans (college kids, no less) rose to the occasion against all expectations, seemed to be part of a comeback in the public consciousness.

I had a little of the same feeling this morning while listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio interview a guy who was seated on the exit row in the US Airways plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River.  He described a scene where people didn’t panic, but instead did what they needed to do in an orderly fashion to survive.  Everyone, from the pilot to the crew to the passengers to the ferry operators and other rescuers, worked together to bring life out of a deadly situation.

This is a proud moment.  It comes at a time when we’ve been smacked around by crisis and negativity.  We have had a feeling of looming disaster.  We walk around psychically hunched, braced for a hit.  The actions of everyone involved in the miracle on the Hudson shows that we may be better suited to weather a storm and to rebuild than we thought.

I didn’t have anything to do with this wonderful story, but these people are my countrymen.  I’m standing a little taller on the inside today.  This may be the start of our turnaround.

The Secular Case Against Cremation

Okay, this is the post I can’t put up at American Spectator. This is the kind of post for which personal blogs were made.

I have long been troubled by the choice of many to be cremated. I far prefer the practice of Christian burial, which leaves the body intact as a sign of the dead person’s hope in resurrection by the Lord.

There are people in my family who are Christians and who prefer to be cremated. This disturbs me. I want to visit those who predecease me at their graves. I want to visit them where they lay, not look at some urn or think about how we scattered an incinerated body over a lake or something like that.

So, I have been trying to think about how to convince people not to be cremated. Some of my Christian relatives and friends are annoyed by my strong preference against the practice of incinerating the dead. They accuse me of having too little faith that God will raise whom he will raise regardless of the state of the body. He will raise even a body that has been burned into ashes.

I suspect they are right. I doubt God would refuse to resurrect or admit to the afterlife someone who requested and received cremation. Still, I think we call it Christian burial for a reason. It is a symbol, just like the wedding ring on a finger. We are signaling the world that we believe God has plans for us. He will resurrect the old body and transform it into an uncorruptible, glorified new body with a future we can only guess about.

But I titled this post “The Secular Case Against Cremation.”  Here it is.  You aren’t going to have to believe in anything more than the technological progress of man.  If you are cremated and your physical body has been destroyed, then how are the incredibly advanced humans of the year 3500 going to reconstitute you by using your DNA?  The graveyards are going to be an incredible bonanza of super advanced bio-archaeology.  They’ll need a body or at least some old bones to work with!  Then, you can hang around telling them about your world until the sun starts going supernova.

Chew on that for a while and see if you’re still so hot about making your final rest as a bunch of ashes in a coffee can.  I hope Heather Mac Donald and the rest of the “secular right” folks enjoy this exciting use of my secular reason.

Neuhaus and the Academy

Part of the reason Richard John Neuhaus will be remembered is for his impact on Christians in higher education. There is no question that his seminal book The Naked Public Square and then his journal First Things changed the way many of us think about religion and culture. He also did something I think is nearly impossible with FT. He created a serious journal that causes many people (a great many of them professors) to do a little dance when they find it in their mailbox.

First Things is not an academic journal, but it is close and better. Instead of dividing knowledge up into a million little pieces and then writing ad nauseum about those subcompartments. First Things invites strong minds to contribute big essays about the intersection of religion, culture, law, politics, art, music, etc. The result is readable and edifying. When I was younger, I knew it was above my head, but I pursued it for improvement, just like a gangster listening to a pronounciation soundtrack to improve his speech. First Things took me places. Today, when I meet a fellow reader, I meet a friend.

Enough of the unsolicited advertisement. I saw a snippet of an email exchange about Neuhaus that is worth reproducing here. I won’t include the name in case the person wants that to remain private:

Converted (to Catholicism) about 1990 or 91. He is one of those Missouri Synod Lutherans who had a tremendous early education in their prep schools and liberal arts college…then a fine seminary education. It was the old German gymnasium system where young guys went off to prep school at 14 and learned German, Greek, Latin, church history, the confessions even before they got to college. The college at Fort Wayne gave them a terrific liberal arts education—classics, literature, history, languages—and then off to seminary. Pelikan, Wilken, Neuhaus, Marty, and many lesser lights came through that system. Valparaiso’s golden age occurred when these highly educated pastors also went into other fields and got doctorates. They had dual educations that made faith and learning engagement a natural thing. M.Divs with a degree in law, economics, literature. Very erudite types who occupied many positions at Valpo. But that has all disappeared….a great but probably necessary loss. How many families would send their boys off to prep school at 14 and what church could afford to run prep schools all over the country for their young men?

But Richard was one of that group….didn’t really need a doctorate.

No, he didn’t really need that doctorate. Wish we could reproduce that system for young people from families without tremendous means.

Neuhaus: Summing Up a Great Man’s Life

Richard John Neuhaus is dead. We’ve lost some big ones in the last year. Many of you will not realize how big this one was. I pray Jody Bottum and some of the others in the First Things (Neuhaus’ hugely influential journal) world can carry on his legacy. Though Neuhaus’ death leaves a chasm to be filled, I think Dr. Bottum is the right man for it.

Anthony Sacramone is a former managing editor of First Things. He is also one of my favorite writers. So, I’m happy to bring you his wonderful tribute to Neuhaus. Here’s a taste:

Woody Allen said that 90% of life is just showing up. Richard John Neuhaus showed up. Whether it was at civil-rights marches in the 1960s or pro-life marches of the 1980s, Richard John Neuhaus showed up. Whether it was at the altar as a parish priest or at the bedside of a dying friend, Richard John Neuhaus showed up. As writer, lecturer, editor, raconteur, counselor, teacher — Richard John Neuhaus showed up. Every day. Until today.

And by the way, the New York Times didn’t do badly, either. I give them credit, particularly since Father Neuhaus spent part of his last column writing about how his desire to read the NYT had continued to slip.

Buckley on Reagan

I reviewed William F. Buckley’s book on Reagan, the one he was writing when he died, for American Spectator. Check it out.

I’m rather pleased by the photo AmSpec used to accompany the article on their front page. See below.

Farewell, Jack Reacher. Farewell, Lee Child.

My father-in-law and I bonded years ago when he introduced me to the genre of action thrillers. It began when he loaned me a box full of the first 60 or so Remo Williams novels. I still remember that chapter two of each book began with “His name was Remo and . . .”

Our latest action hero has been Jack Reacher, the creation of British television writer Lee Child. Reacher (always Reacher in the series, never Jack) is an imaginative hero. He spent the first thirty-five years or so of his life on military bases. First, as a child of a soldier and then as a top military policeman. The hook is that Reacher, as a military policeman, is something like a super-cop. His targets were trained men, often devious, tough fighters without a moral code.

As he aged, he tired of his regimented life, quit the army, and became a wanderer. Reacher doesn’t even have a suitcase. He wears a set of clothes until it wears out, buys good quality English walking shoes, and carries an ATM card and a folding toothbrush. He is something of a cross between Dr. Richard Kimble (The Fugitive) and The Incredible Hulk. Big, tough, strong, and very street smart. He moves from place to place and gets involved in situations usually requiring his violent intervention.

All in all, it has been a highly enjoyable series. The kind of candy I yearned for while working on my dissertation. Upon finishing, I gorged on the likes of Reacher.

The latest, Nothing to Lose, lost me as a customer. Lee Child, the author, seems to have REALLY enjoyed the recent works of village atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He seems to have enjoyed them so much that he had to come up with a highly improbable plot just to demonstrate how stupid he thinks Christians are. Oh, and along the way he manages to claim that nothing the American military has done since 1945 has been worth the price of men’s lives.

But Child’s little crusade against conservative protestants and American military efforts of the past sixty years wouldn’t have been enough to send me packing if the book weren’t so bad. The villain catches Reacher multiple times and somewhat inexplicably lets him go. The bad guy has a compound. Reacher spends the entire novel working his way in and out of the compound as he goes between two towns, Hope and Despair. On the one hand, the villain has put together an incredibly devious and ingenious plan to help bring about the apocalypse. On the other, Child (through Reacher) assures us that the villain is a weak-minded man who is accustomed to believing things that comfort him. It is profoundly boring, which is something I have never been remotely close to saying about any of the other books. It was literally an act of will for me to continue reading Nothing to Lose. I was determined to finish because I knew it would likely be the last run for Reacher and me.

Now, having finished, I’m sure of it. It was.

Vanity Post: My Alasdair MacIntyre Story

Last year, I went on a trip to Illinois and Indiana for academic networking purposes.  I spent one of the days at Notre Dame where I met with Mark Noll and David Solomon.

Solomon and I sat down at a little corner eatery on campus and began chatting about the last few years and a few things we have in common.  In the middle of it, he looked up and began speaking to a man behind me who I couldn’t see.

He said something like this:

“I can’t talk with you right now.  I’m having lunch with Hunter Baker.”

I asked, “Who was that?”

He replied, “Oh, that was Alasdair MacIntyre.”

My little subgroup of fellow academics are all smiling now.