We met together last night and decided the topic shall be Apologetics. N. and I are going to compile a packet of essays by various authors. So far our day-and-a-half-year-old list of includes essays by Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Doug Erlandson (on Thomism), Pascal, John DePoe (on the Ontological Argument — I’m sure there are better essays out there, this one reads like a brief overview in PHIL 101), G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, B.B. Warfield, Cornelius van Til, Greg Bahnsen, and Douglas Wilson. We would greatlfy appreciate any recomendations, especially to well-written and relevant atheist essays.

Time to walk on down to the dentist. If it takes a minute to drive the distance, how long does it take to walk it?

Here is a C.S. Lewis poem N. came upon lastnight, lurking somewhere in the internet. From Poems, edited by Walter Hooper:

“The Apologists Evening Prayer”

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

In a recent interview (January 23) Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, a well-known author and priest from the Archdiocese of New York (I read his Death on a Friday Afternoon as a Lenten devotional last year, and recomend it) discusses how excluding Protestants from Eucharist is in the interest of ecumenicalism, and offers an understandable rational.

Among other interesting statements, a keen observation on the general psychology and chaos of protestant churches:

‘Cardinal Ratzinger has suggestively noted that, for Protestants, the decision for Christ and the decision for the church are two decisions, whereas for Catholics the decision for Christ and his Church is one decision. ‘

In December N. came up with the idea of hosting a Bible study in our home for twenty-somethings twice a month that would include a light dinner of meats, cheese, breads, and wine. After the rapid happenings of the season died down we have again began to consider the specifics, the most pressing being what exactly we’re going to study. The material needs to accommodate a revolving number of attendees, and so would likely need to be informal in nature not require hours of reading, and be possible to jump in on. We would also like to supplement the discussion from time to time with tapes from recent conferences (are tapes from the recent conference at Auburn Avenue available anywhere?), and videos such as the PBS documentary The Question of God: Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, and whatever else catches our collective eye.

Tonight some of our friends are coming over for dinner to discuss ideas. Does anyone know of any studies that might suit us? We all get quite a fair dose of systematic theology and the Word at Trinity, so I think what we’re possibly aiming for (and I’m guessing here, this hasn’t been discussed as of yet) is a study oriented in the application of Christianity to culture, art, politics, social issues.

I will talk more about this later. Right now, I just want to remind myself to look at it again.

The BBC reports that today is to be the worst day of the year.