Ken Burns has directed a critically-acclaimed, almost 15-hour long documentary entitled THE WAR. The documentary traces the lives of these who fought and those who stayed behind from four American towns: Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Luverne, Minnesota. From the producers: "Above all, we wanted to honor the experiences of those who lived through the greatest cataclysm in human history by providing the opportunity for them to bear witness to their own history. Our film is therefore an attempt to describe, through their eyewitness testimony, what the war … [Read more...] about The PBS Documentary “The War”
Archives for September 2007
Video Games Cut Into GPAs
As a university professor, I do not find this USA Today study by Todd Stinebrickner, an associate professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario, and his father, Ralph Stinebrickner, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Berea College in Kentucky, to be surprising: "First-year students whose roommates brought a video game player to college studied 40 minutes less each day on average, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Those 40 minutes of lost study time translated into first-semester grades that were 0.241 points lower on the 4.0 … [Read more...] about Video Games Cut Into GPAs
The Role of Authority
Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile explains the value of authority---civil, parental, pastoral, and marital. He defines authority as "the right and ability to control, command, or determine the proper responses of others." Excerpt: "God laces all of life with some form of authority. It's clear, then, that a wholesale rejection of God-ordained authority leads inexorably to anarchy, instability, unrestrained desires, evil, and the judgment of God." … [Read more...] about The Role of Authority
Why We Believe the Bible
In 1969, Dr. Daniel Fuller wrote: "Thus we can never say that the Bible's good news is true news because it is good news. Instead, its truth must be based on something besides our desire for it to be true. There are two ways the attempt has been made to show the Bible as true. One way is to argue from its historical origins; the other, to argue from the gift of faith that God gives a man to credit it as true." (Hermeneutics, Chapter 8) In the Why We Believe the Bible seminar taught by John Piper, Apprentices were asked to read chapters 7 and 8 of Fuller's 1983 volume Hermeutics (either … [Read more...] about Why We Believe the Bible
Collin Hansen on Mark Driscoll
Writing for Christianity Today, Collin Hansen pens an engaging overview of Mark Driscoll. An excerpt: "The spectrum of response speaks to his sharp tongue—his greatest strength and his glaring weakness. But Driscoll also disturbs many fellow evangelicals because he straddles the borders that divide us. His unflinching Reformed theology grates on the church-growth crowd. His plan to grow a large church strikes postmoderns as arrogant. His roots in the emerging church worry Calvinists. No one group can claim him. Maybe that's why they all turn their guns on him." (HT: JT) … [Read more...] about Collin Hansen on Mark Driscoll
Interview with Piper on Wright
The DG blog will be posting a seven-part interview with John Piper over the next few weeks leading up to the October 23 release of The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright. Here is the publisher's description: N.T. Wright, a world-renowned New Testament scholar and bishop of Durham in the Church of England, has spent years studying the apostle Paul’s writings and has offered a “fresh perspective” on Paul’s theology. Among his conclusions are that “the discussions of justification in much of the history of the church—certainly since Augustine—got off on the wrong foot, at least … [Read more...] about Interview with Piper on Wright