The Christian Vanguard

My students don't believe me when I tell them I am an introvert. I wonder if I am being fake in class, that I'm just playing a character, that who they see in class isn't really who I am. I project my voice, I like to tell stories, tell jokes, aiming to deliver some point about the subject we are covering. But as soon as the last bell rings, I mentally clock out, and I rush to be alone in my car. This alone time is important to me. I'll get frustrated when my wife calls me, with seemingly no real purpose other than to talk to me about how she can't quite figure out how to make cornbread right and all the research she has done about cornbread, and this is frustrating because it violates my me time that I don't wish to fill with cornbread.  But I get it. She wants to talk with me, because by sharing her speech with me, she is sharing with me her private and innermost thoughts and life. We are married, and are not only united in body but in mind, and sometimes the ...

I teach 10th and 11th grade history, but as a bit of an afterthought. When I applied to this school to teach, my goal was to teach theology, but history (and literature) came with the package. It's the subject I am the least enthusiastic about. Before today, I suppose the reason I would give you if you were to ask me why we ought to study history is so that we know ourselves. I find myself in this American context, and I am partially shaped by my environment, so I ought to know how I got here, and this should clue me in as to where I ought to go and how to get there.  After a small conference I attended today hosted by Hillsdale, the thinking became a bit clearer for me. History, the speakers said, is a study of particulars. The reason we study history is because when we teach history, we are presenting an argument. It's not just a narrative. And what history does is something like provide precedents, or minor premises. So for example, if I suffer from a corrupt government, I w...

A couple of months ago, I read an article about how semi academic talks were being hosted in bars. Like TED talks, but a lot more casual, and not as pretentious. I was vaguely aware of these happening, but they were picking up steam and so, it merited an article in either the LA Times or NY Times or some other legacy paper. I shared it with a friend, and told him what it really was is just a bunch of socialist millennials who didn’t want to leave the college scene. I’ve been to a meeting like that once years ago, when I was still in community college, and didn’t like the people. Literally socialists, talking Marx. So I looked down my nose and didn’t think much of it.  The algorithm being what it is, suggested to me on Instagram to follow one of the pages who host these events, called the Saturday Salon. I was mildly interested, and followed really just to confirm what I had already believed, that it was just a socialist club. Again, didn’t think much of it.  Soon after that, s...

John 17:3, from the mouth of Our Lord, reads, "Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." I heard Muslims cite this passage and argue that this shows that God the Father is the only true God, and thus, Jesus is not. This is an invalid inference. And we know it's invalid because of the placement of the word "only". There is a difference between  1. God the Father is the only true God  and  2. Only God the Father is the true God The Muslim, and really any unitarian who wants to argue in this way, is saying (2) but the text only says (1). So what's the difference? (1) means that the Father is identical to God and there is exactly one God while (2) means the Father is identical to God and anything identical to God is identical to the Father. Trinitarians can affirm (1). We have to affirm (1). It is part of our faith. But (2) is clearly heretical, and is not supported by the text.  To clarify further, (...