Monday, February 06, 2006

Links and Notes

* The early modern Carnivalesque is up. The posts on astronomy in Calvin and Aquinas, self-portraiture, and leeks and onions in early modern philosophy were especially interesting. As can be seen from the passage in Malebranche, it's an important example for him; he is very clear that he is getting it from the story in Numbers. However, unlike the others, Malebranche never suggests that the Egyptians worshipped leeks and onions; his focus is on the Israelites, whose sin was not that they literally worshipped leeks and onions but that they gave leeks and onions priority over God.

* The second Biblical Studies Carnival is also up.

* Loren Rosson III has finished up his series on Lewis's Perelandra: Prologue, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Epilogue.

* Lee at verbum ipsum points to this review of Nagel's The Last Word.

* I keep forgetting to link to Clayton's interesting discussion of Steward's analysis of 'could have done otherwise'.

* Bono's homily at the National Prayer Breakfast,(HT: GetReligion). It was interesting to note that he has a Thomistic understanding of almsgiving:

And finally, it’s not about charity after all, is it? It’s about justice.

Let me repeat that: It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.

And that’s too bad.

Because you’re good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it.

But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.


* Father Jim has a homily on Job.

[UPDATE: Jimmy Akin has a series discussing various interpretive approaches to Genesis 1, which he has put into a single post. I think I'll be putting up a post soon on evening and morning knowledge, which is a curious Augustinian variant of the Revelatory Day interpretation, one that has had a long and distinguished theological history.]

[UPDATE 2: An interesting discussion of the notion of 'existential import' (HT: Beyond Necessity).]

As you might have noticed, I'm making some minor changes to the template -- reorganizing a bit, sorting out the blogroll and adding a few people I haven't gotten around to adding yet, etc. This will probably be occurring over the next several weeks, bit by bit.