William F. Buckley Jr.: 1925-2008

NEW YORK — William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.

A conservative icon has passed.

I picked up my first issue of National Review while in college, and subsequently became an avid reader and fan of William Buckley. Reading the magazine in public was an act of defiance. Embracing the ideas within was an act of heresy.

I also enjoyed his Firing Line appearances (thanks to Mom and Dad). This vaulted him into the mainstream cultural stratosphere, but the enduring power of his written words made him an intellectual supernova. Check out God and Man at Yale or any of the Blackford Oakes spy novels.

Mr. Buckley built the Right’s communications infrastructure and laid the groundwork for the New Media. He was an engaged and engaging Renaissance man who joined conservatism and libertarianism, fought statism, and served the Lord–with trademark good humor and joie de vivre.

William F. Buckley Jr. left, talks with former California Gov. Ronald Reagan at the South Carolina Governor's Mansion in Columbia S.C., on Jan. 13, 1978, after the two debated the Panama Canal Treaty. (Photo: AP Photo/Lou Krasky)

And, I admired his wit:

"Mr. Buckley," one non-fan wrote in 1967, "you are the mouthpiece of that evil rabble that depends on fraud, perjury, dirty tricks, anything at all that suits their purposes. I would trust a snake before I would trust you or anybody you support."

Responded Buckley: "What would you do if I supported the snake?"

Elvis vs. The Mummy

This is my kind of horror flick (it's an oldie but a goodie):

Mud Creek, Texas, is about to get all shook up. When mysterious deaths plague the Shady Rest retirement home, it's up to an aging, cantankerous "Elvis" (Bruce Campbell) and a decrepit and black"JFK" (Ossie Davis) to defeat a 3,000-year-old-Egyptian mummy with a penchant for sucking human souls! Can the King show the world that he can still take care of business?

I'm casting my vote for Elvis!

For Whom Did Christ Die?

Christ Carrying the Cross (1737-38) by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Just finished a Sunday school class on the Essentials of Reformed Theology or "What We Believe". This was a good course that sparked much discussion. As we went through the Five Points of Calvinism (TULIP: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints), several students had problems with the third point, limited atonement.

John Own, one of my favorite theologians of all time, summed up the issue rather nicely:

For Whom Did Christ Die?

The Father imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent punishment for, either:

1. All the sins of all men.
2. All the sins of some men. Or,
3. Some of the sins of all men.

In which case it may be said:

1. That if the last be true, all men have some sins to answer for, and so, none are saved. 2. That if the second be true, then Christ, in their stead suffered for all the sins of all the elect [His people] in the whole world, and this is the truth. 3. But if the first be the case, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins?
You answer, "Because of unbelief."

I ask, is this unbelief a sin, or is it not? If it be, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not. If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died? If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!

The author of Psalm 111 writes in verse 9: 'He has sent redemption to His people; He has commanded His covenant forever: Holy and awesome is His name.'

It's all about Change...

Looks like Obama just might be the Democratic nominee (he's currently beating Hillary like a drum). He's certainly made change a central theme in his candidacy.

Our former President and First-Lady (er, I mean First-Gigolo), Bill, is making it clear that Hillary is in crunch time.

Alas, I'm getting ready to send off my absentee ballot request to the state of Kansas but admittedly don't know who I will cast my vote for. In the mean time I continue to follow the news and read candidate assessments courtesy my fellow bloggers, particularly Reepicheep.

E.R. on Liberal Theology

Rommel in Africa

On this day, German General Erwin Rommel, called "the Desert Fox," arrives in Tripoli, Libya, with the newly formed Afrika Korps, to reinforce the beleaguered Italians' position.

In January 1941, Adolf Hitler established the Afrika Korps for the explicit purpose of helping his Italian Axis partner maintain territorial gains in North Africa. "[F]or strategic, political, and psychological reasons, Germany must assist Italy in Africa," the Fuhrer declared. The British had been delivering devastating blows to the Italians; in three months they pushed the Italians out of Egypt while wounding or killing 20,000 Italian soldiers and taking another 130,000 prisoner.

Having commanded a panzer division in Germany's successful French and Low Countries' campaigns, General Rommel was dispatched to Libya along with the new Afrika Korps to take control of the deteriorating situation. Until that time, Italian General Ettore Bastico was the overall commander of the Axis forces in North Africa--which included a German panzer division and the Italian armored division. Rommel was meant to command only his Afrika Korps and an Italian corps in Libya, but he wound up running the entire North African campaign.

The German soldiers of the Afrika Korps found adapting to the desert climate initially difficult; Rommel found commanding his Italian troops, who had been used to an Italian commander, difficult as well. When Hitler, preoccupied with his plans for his Soviet invasion, finally gave the go-ahead for an offensive against British positions in Egypt, Rommel's forces were stopped dead in their tracks and then forced to retreat. In the famous battle of El Alamein, the British Eighth Army--beginning in October 23, 1942--surprised the German commander with its brute resolve, and pushed him and his Afrika Korps back across and out of North Africa. (Ironically, the Arabs celebrated Rommel as a liberator from British imperialism.) Retreat followed retreat, and Rommel finally withdrew from North Africa entirely and returned to Europe in March of 1943, leaving the Afrika Korps in other hands (the Afrika Korps, out-manned, out-gunned and ill supplied would eventually 'die on the vine' and cease to be a viable fighting organization).

Rommel would soon take charge of the defenses of Western Europe; he'd plan and prepare German defenses on the coast of France against an impending allied invasion.

Top Twelve Theology Books of Christian History

I like "top" lists. Here's a list of the top twelve theology books of Christian history. I got it from the Torrey Honors Institute (part of Biola University). Following their great books curriculum and a Socratic pedagogy, they give students a one-semester introduction to the classic Christian texts. The faculty assigns, along with the Bible, the Top Twelve Theology Books of Christian History. The competition was fierce and the answers can’t be final. They imposed a few artificial limits: the books have to be things that generally educated adults can read and discuss profitably, and they have to come from a range of time periods and cultures. They have to be influential on multiple generations, which rules out newfangled stuff from the last couple of centuries.

Here’s what they came up with, and what they take their students through every year. Can it be improved? (Note: You will not find 'Your Best Life Now' or anything from Joyce Meyer , T.D. Jakes, Paula White, et al.)

1. Selections from the Bible: Paul’s Letters and John’s Gospel. It may be cheating to count these as one entry, especially since more than half of the semester (fifteen three-hour discussion sessions) is spent on these texts. Reading Paul’s letters in chronological order (Thessalonians to the pastorals) and discussing them over the course of several weeks is a remarkable experience. John’s Gospel then provides some of the crucial categories that will be taken up by the church fathers in the next centuries.

2. Irenaeus of Lyons, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. Circa 150. If you can only read one church father from before Nicaea, Irenaeus is the man. This little book shows him at his best, synthesizing the biblical data into the big apostolic picture. Bottom line: It takes two testaments to make one Bible, and three persons to make one God.

3. Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation. Circa 325. Athanasius concentrates his thought on the life of Christ, and everything in Scripture seems to reorganize itself around this shining center. One the Incarnation reads like a suspense novel, with the making and remaking of humanity by God’s eternal Word as the plot line.

4. Gregory of Nazianzus, The Five Theological Orations. Circa 381. The grand, objective mysteries of Christian doctrine are presented here with striking clarity. Nobody can teach the Trinity and the incarnation like Gregory. His work was a major leap forward in understanding Scriptural truth, and he remains readable today.

5. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ. Circa 440. Cyril, for too long neglected in modern theology, had a theological grasp of what it meant that our savior was the eternal Son. This book is not perfect, and there may be a better book out there somewhere to bring together all the best from the early church’s development of Trinity and incarnation, but I can’t find it. His work crowns the classic period of Christian thought on these issues.

6. Augustine of Hippo, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love. Circa 430. For general purposes, if you’re following this list as an actual reading program for yourself, you should definitely substitute his Confessions here. Our students have already read the Confessions (and selections from City of God) in a previous semester, so we went with a short work in which Augustine lays out the main things about Christianity: faith, hope, and love. The latest translation of it re-titles it The Augustine Catechism, a silly title that nevertheless hints at how comprehensive a handbook it is.

7. Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man). Circa 1100. Most famous as a systematic account of the atonement using the categories of honor and recompense, this book is actually equally concerned with God’s character and attributes, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the doctrine of the incarnation. Anselm’s book gets so many things right that it dominated Western soteriology for some time. In addition to showing his readers the logic of what had been revealed, Anselm’s book stands as an invitation to think through these most important doctrines for yourself.

8. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae selections. Circa 1270. There’s no substitute for an encounter with the big Summa itself. Not many people can or should read the whole thing, but a few hundred pages of the best questions from it will give you mental discipline and spiritual instruction that I don’t know another source for. Focus on the nature of theology, the existence of God, the doctrine of grace, and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. Other anthologies may also work for you, like Kreeft’s Summa of the Summa or Bauerchmidt’s Holy Teaching, but we prefer to operate with as little commentary as possible. Once you learn your way around the Summa, you can use the newadvent.org edition to find Thomas’ answer to anything.

9. Martin Luther, Selections. Circa 1530. Luther didn’t write one comprehensive statement of his theology, so you have to read selections from a variety of his occasional writings: he was a translator, Bible interpreter, controversial theologian, catechizer, pastor, and public witness in a difficult time. Read his lectures on Galatians, his Heidelberg Disputation, his sermons on Two Kinds of Righteousness and The Freedom of a Christian,plus the Small Catechism. Luther provokes and disturbs and comforts, and just generally writes with a tone of voice that can find you where you are. This anthology edited by the late Tim Lull is The Place to Start.

10. John Calvin, The Institutes. Circa 1559. The Institutes is a book with an incredible ability to train the mind in theological insight. It deserves to be read in its entirety — not because it is some tight Euclidean system with the axiom of predestination establishing parallel lines from which everything else follows– but because it takes up the main ideas of the Bible in such good order. If you can’t make time to read it all, take generous excerpts from Book I on the knowledge of God the creator, Book II on Christ and redemption, Book III on faith, the Spirit, and election, and Book IV on the church and sacraments.

11. The Heidelberg Catechism by Ursinus and Olevianus Circa 1563. Biblical, pastoral, comprehensive, nourishing, instructive, pointed, memorable, devotional, and practical. If there’s a perfect catechism, this is it.

12. John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress. Circa 1678. Bunyan’s homespun sincerity meets you on such a fundamental level that it gets into your imagination in astonishing ways. Very young children can follow most of the book, and graduate students can be stumped and stirred by some of the moves this Baptist preacher makes. Coleridge called it a Summa Theologicae Evangelicae. Try it, or if you haven’t read it as an adult, try it again. In our semester survey, we only read Part I, but Part II has some of the best stuff Bunyan ever wrote.

Reagan Quotes from '75-'76 Diagnose Our Current Situation

"I don't know about you," said Reagan in 1975, "but I'm impatient with those Republicans who, after the last election, rushed into print saying we must broaden the base of our party, when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents."

John McCain comes to mind: I don't trust him because he has supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants (remember him teaming up with Teddy Kennedy on this one?!?!), worked to limit money in politics in what can be considered a violation of free speech (McCain-Feingold) and opposed a constitutional ban on gay marriage. And he voted against President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

Second Reagan quote, 1976: "Don't give up your ideals, don't compromise, don't turn to expediency -- and don't, for heaven's sake, having seen the inner workings of the watch -- don't get cynical."

Republicans want to fuzz up and blur the differences between ourselves and the liberal democrats. This is the kind of thing that leads to those crazy super-dunderhead team ups like McCain-Kennedy and, leaves the Republican resembling a wimpy RINO (Republican in Name Only).