28 August 2008
In 1915, Robert Frost wrote a famous poem titled “The Road Not Taken.”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
For most Christians, the study of Greek is a road not taken, but usually there’s no clear point of decision. It’s one of those things that flits Read the rest of this entry »
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Classes and Seminars (teaching), How To, News | Tagged: 1 John, Christianity, Greek, greek instruction, koine greek, New Testament Greek, religion | 
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Posted by Tim Nichols
24 August 2008
The first of several planned papers on liturgical matters, “Against Liturgy-Bashing” attempts to clear away the nonsense that plagues our thinking in many American churches. To bring it closer to home: our local church is in desperate need of liturgical reform, and we cannot even begin to build a God-honoring liturgy until we have cleared away the underbrush of the pagan ideas that harden our necks and soften our heads. To that end, this paper addresses several common objections to liturgical worship. Two excerpts:
Does the leading of the Spirit require spontaneity rather than planning? Again, we can return to the commands to sing in order to see the fallacy here. Imagine if we all just got together, and on the count of three, all began to sing whatever words happened to pop into our heads, set to Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Meditations, News, Writings | Tagged: Christianity, church, liturgy, liturgy-bashing, religion, theology, Worship | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols
17 August 2008
If you had to be stuck on a desert island for [life, ten years, or some other long period of time], what books would you want with you?”
It’s a common thought experiment, and usually the occasion of much consideration and discussion. If you hang out with the more passionate readers, as I often do, it will also be the occasion of heated debate. Yesterday, I happened upon an interesting twist on it, and I’d like to share it.
So get out your pen and paper, and here we go.
No, seriously, get out a pen and paper. (Or open a Word document, or whatever). You’ll thank me later.
The challenge is to answer the standard question, as stated above, but with two additional conditions. First, all your physical needs are taken care of, so assume you have no pragmatic need for medical texts, homesteading reference books, etc. This is strictly life-of-the-mind stuff. (Of course, if you enjoy reading medical texts, that’s another thing…) Second, you have only two minutes to answer, starting right now.
Go. Tick tock.
Done? Good. I’d love to hear your list. This was mine: Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Books, Classics, Meditations | Tagged: Christianity, church history, Classics, great books, philosophy, theology, western canon | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols
10 August 2008
The opening chapters of How to Read Genesis by Tremper Longman III are pretty good. So when I got to chapter four, titled “Myth or History? Genesis and the Enuma Elish” I was excited. I had just recently engaged an unbeliever on the question of whether the biblical stories — or at least the supernatural ones — were myth or history, and I have also long been intrigued by the contrasts between Genesis and Enuma Elish. I was looking forward to seeing Longman’s take on it.
I’m sorry to say that I was sorely disappointed. Longman writes:
Read the rest of this entry »
7 Comments | Books, Meditations, Reviews | Tagged: Bible, Christianity, creation, Enuma Elish, Genesis, gnosticism, James Jordan, theology, Tremper Longman, worldview | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols
3 August 2008
A week ago, most of the Latin I knew could be found on the back of a dime.
Okay, that’s a slight understatement. I had the usual collection of Latin expressions that one picks up: carpe diem, cogito ergo sum, quid pro quo, et cetera. I also had several of the slightly more arcane ones that you pick up in an academic setting (id est, ad hominem, post hoc ergo prompter hoc) and in other weird places I hang out (carpe noctem, aut pax aut bellum, nemo me impune lacessit). But that aside, I didn’t know beans about Latin.
Enter Veritas Press, at which one can evidently find staffers crazy enough to think it possible to teach Latin in a single week. I found out about this a week ago Thursday, signed up Friday morning, bought a textbook Friday afternoon, and enjoyed a restful weekend, because the class would start the following Monday. Iacta alea fuit.
We finished yesterday (Friday). It was great.
Everything about it was great: the textbook, the teacher, the online delivery system, and the company I got to keep as a student. The only little, tiny drawback was the fact that the class ran from 8 am to 4 pm, Eastern time. That means 5 am to 1 pm out here, and rolling out of bed at 4:45 am to study Latin was imperfectly blissful. My wife wasn’t a fan of the alarm going off that early, either. (But when I offered to sleep on the couch she gave me a speech about how she was willing to sacrifice a little sleep so that I could learn Latin — what a woman!)
But on with the review. First, the textbook. Written as GIs swelled the Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Books, Classics, Reviews, Seminars, Classes & Conferences | Tagged: Latin, Latin in a Week, Latin instruction, Veritas Press | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols
