I’ve heard this phrase a few times over the years, but never really thought to figure out where it came from. I always assumed that it was just some rough metaphor for a sort of ubiquitous, sweeping change. But when I came across it while reading about a Danger Mouse album (of all things) I decided to look it up.

Lo and behold, it’s actually from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which is is at once both crazy and completely unsurprising to me. A huge number of English idioms can be traced back to either the Bard, or to the Bible (or both), but while I have yet to read The Tempest I was surprised that I had never come it as the source for this phrase. Specifically, it is found in a song being sung by the spirit Ariel while he is enchanting Ferdinand, the King of Naples’ son:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

What a queer and evocative piece of verse. The idea of “sea change” is therefore not necessarily some wave-like rippling change, but a transformation, that is organic and in some way different or “other”. And more specifically a transformation into something uncanny but also deep and interesting.

I was struck by how well this idea describes the sort of change the is characterized by the kingdom of God. It is both strange and otherworldly, because it is, in fact, of another world, and yet it is good. Its strangeness is welcoming and stirring, and despite being otherworldly there is a sense that the change taking place has an aroma of homecoming.

Furthermore the kingdom of God is, in its other-worldliness, much like the sea. Inhospitable to man in his natural state, but thrilling and adventuresome to reach and experience, and yet despite how much one might want to dwell there he cannot, without a sea-change.

Mike has an excellent list of 10 Signs of Intellectual Honesty up on his blog today. Everyone who regularly engages in internet-based discussions should give the list a perusal, and especially make sure that they are themselves following the guidelines. Actually, “guidelines” is too weak a word. And perhaps “laws” is too strong. Instructions? Ground rules? CODES?

Anyway, the point is that you really need to follow this list and make sure that you recognize when people you are talking to are or are not following them. The bulk of my internet discussions hinge upon my attempting to point out logical fallacies in the thinking of others. Not weak arguments, not rebutting otherwise good arguments with uncompelling evidence, but thinking that is flawed in a very rudimentary way. The inability to reason correctly causes a whole other host of problems to crop up, many of which are identified on Mike’s list.

Items 2 through 5 are especially good. If you are not able to be reasonable in the assessment of alternative points of view, then you have no business engaging in these sorts of discussions. Likewise if you are unable to accurately assess the strength of your own view, the same holds true. Being able to walk a mile in the another person’s shoes goes a lot further than a mile in making you a reasonable and engaging thinker. And being humble and willing redress your own thinking could be said to go even further.

David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Page sets the stage in the following way:

Charles Dickens has probably had more influence on the way that we celebrate Christmas today than any single individual in human history except one. At the beginning of the Victorian period the celebration of Christmas was in decline. The medieval Christmas traditions, which combined the celebration of the birth of Christ with the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia (a pagan celebration for the Roman god of agriculture), and the Germanic winter festival of Yule, had come under intense scrutiny by the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell. The Industrial Revolution, in full swing in Dickens’ time, allowed workers little time for the celebration of Christmas.

The romantic revival of Christmas traditions that occurred in Victorian times had other contributors: Prince Albert brought the German custom of decorating the Christmas tree to England, the singing of Christmas carols (which had all but disappeared at the turn of the century) began to thrive again, and the first Christmas card appeared in the 1840s. But it was the Christmas stories of Dickens, particularly his 1843 masterpiece A Christmas Carol, that rekindled the joy of Christmas in Britain and America. [em. mine]

If you have been alive in the United States or Britain for, let’s say, at least 12 years, then chances are you have been exposed to the classic short story A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. The work continues to be an enduring classic; even after 160 years we see it revisited again and again through theatre, television, cinema, and other mediums.

But did you know that Dickens wrote other Christmas books after A Christmas Carol? Indeed, he wrote several. My suggestion for this Christmas season is to read A Christmas Carol if you haven’t already. The actual text is incredibly charming. If you are one of the lucky ones that has read it, then have a go at one of these (titles link to online texts):

• The Chimes (wiki): “Toby “Trotty” Veck, a poor working man, loses his faith in human nature and comes to believe that he and his fellow poor are naturally “vicious”. Then he is afforded a nightmare vision of his loved ones’ future after his death. The spirits or goblins in his local church bells show him how anyone, however good, may descend into degradation and ruin if sufficiently driven by circumstances. The chimes teach Trotty that nobody is born wicked, that crime and vice are man-made conditions, and that poor people have the same right to seek improvement and happiness as the rich.” [1]
• The Cricket on the Hearth (wiki): “The story centers on John and Dot Peerybingle whose marriage is threatened by a wide difference in their ages. When confronted with the possibility of Dot’s infidelity John consults the spirit of the Cricket on the Hearth whose chirping Dot has said brings luck. The cricket assures John that all will be well. In the end the misunderstanding is cleared up and the couple’s happiness is restored. The story also features the Scrooge-like conversion of hard-hearted toymaker Tackleton.” [2]
• The Battle of Life (wiki):

“The Battle of Life centers on a change of heart, but this time without the aid of supernatural beings. Doctor Jeddler’s daughters make sacrifices in love which convert their father’s cynical view of life.” [3]


• The Haunted Man (wiki): “Mr. Redlaw is a chemistry professor tormented by painful memories. He is visited on Christmas Eve by a phantom, a double of himself, who bestows the gift of forgetting these painful memories. The catch is that others who come into contact with the professor also lose remembrance of past hurts and sorrows.” [4]


1. “The Chimes.” Wikipedia. 8 Dec. 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_chimes>.
2. “Dickens Christmas Books.” David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Bage. 8 Dec. 2008 <http://charlesdickenspage.com/christmas_books.html>.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

After a little over a year of being offline I finally bit the bullet and got my FreeBSD box back up and running. It’s still in the living room but at least it will boot without throwing a hissy fit.

Also, God bless fsck.

Sometimes I think we should worry less about whether or not God is real and worry about how much more real he might be than us. There’s a frightening aspect to a reality where you are vapor and mist next to a being whose solidity outstrips the very earth you stand on.

Some more quick thoughts from Chesterton, this one about “The Riddle of the Nativity.” In the Everlasting Man, Chesterton devotes two chapters (The God in the Cave; The Riddle of the Gospel) to the alien (that is, otherworldly) nature of the good news.

Have you ever stopped to think about the idiosyncrasies in the nativity/incarnation story? Thought about what exactly it meant for the Most High God of Heaven to be born below the earth? That is, if the traditional view of the stable in a cave is correct? There’s something topsy-turvy in that, in the whole of the Nativity story. Chesterton says that nothing else had happened except the whole world had turned inside out. All the eyes that were faced outward at the huge expanse of the universe were now turned inward at the smallest thing, a child in a feed trough.

Such a strange story. Everything about it is backwards. The omnipotent creator was born as an impotent babe. The eternal, everlasting Alpha and Omega lay in a manger, just minutes old. The Holy One of God emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and born in flesh came into a world not worthy of his pinkie toe. And not only did those toes walk the earth among us, their owner washed the toes of his disciples. Out in the open you have the angels of heaven meeting with the shepherds on the hills, but the ruler of heaven was beneath the hills.

In Hebrews it says that we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our plight. How many are there that can sympathize with his? If anyone in the entirety of human existence ever deserved a high birth, it was he, but he was born in a dank cave. Sure, there are persons who can (unfortunately) say they were born in a back-alley, or a brothel. There are even some kings who could say they were “born low”. But there is only one King of Kings who can say as much. There is only One was can say “I, God, was born in a cave.”

Note that that cave was most likely crowded with animals, since it was during the census; not exactly the most pristine conditions for birthing a child. And while the people in the inn rolicked about, their king was sleeping under their very noses. Have you ever thought about what it would have been like to be that inn keeper? You have the ponderously pregnant Mary, and the watchful, nervous Joseph, and you turn them out into the cold. Or hot. I honestly don’t know what time of year the census was at. I think I read that it actually might have taken place over a period of a couple years. Anyways, not only could this inn-keeper not find room for a very pregnant woman and her husband, not only did he turn this young couple aside, he turned aside his messiah. Now I know that probably this inn keeper never knew exactly who he had shut the door on. News of Jesus’ heritage might not have spread out to Bethlehem before this guy was gone. But what if it had? What if this person found out that the Promised One was born out among the animals because he didn’t have room. The thought sends chills down my spine. And, of course, perhaps I’m reading too much into it. Perhaps it was convention to not elevate expectant mothers, like we do (parking spaces and all). Perhaps there literally wasn’t any room, and the inn keeper had people sleeping on every surface, stoop to cellar, and he couldn’t admit more without turning out others. I guess we’ll find out in the millennial kingdom.

I’d like to end this post with a poem by Chesterton entitled Gloria In Profundis:

There has fallen on earth for a token

A god too great for the sky.

He has burst out of all things and broken

The bounds of eternity:

Into time and the terminal land

He has strayed like a thief or a lover,

For the wine of the world brims over,

Its splendour is split on the sand.

Who is proud when the heavens are humble,

Who mounts if the mountains fall,

If the fixed stars topple and tumble

And a deluge of love drowns all-

Who rears up his head for a crown,

Who holds up his will for a warrant,

Who strives with the starry torrent,

When all that is good goes down?

For in dread of such falling and failing

The fallen angels fell

Inverted in insolence, scaling

The hanging mountain of hell:

But unmeasured of plummet and rod

Too deep for their sight to scan,

Outrushing the fall of man

Is the height of the fall of God.

Glory to God in the Lowest

The spout of the stars in spate-

Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest

And the lightning fears to be late:

As men dive for sunken gem

Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,

The fallen star has found it

In the cavern of Bethlehem.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

By happenstance I ran across Arthur Peacocke’s wikipedia article which, to my dismay, intimated that he had died on October 21st of this year. The news confirmed it.

You may be wondering who the Rev. Dr. Arthur Peacocke was, and with good reason. I have never really heard his name outside of selective circles. I myself only ran across him in my research on divine action (God’s interaction with the world). Peacocke’s particular view is described as a kind of “top-down” or “whole-part” causation in which God is the mind and the world is the body, but God is totally transcendant and immanent in a way that is contrary with how the “I” does not transcend the human body ontologically. (read more here.)

Peacocke did much for the proposal that evolution and theistic belief not necessarily be at odds with each other. This is evident in books such as Evolution: The Disguised Friend of Faith?, Creation and the World of Science: The Re-Shaping of Belief, and Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural, Divine and Human. Incidentally, Peacocke was also an ordained priest in the Church of England, a founding member of The International Society for Science and Religion, the founder of The Society of Ordained Scientists, and a council member of The European Society for the Study of Science And Theology. He was also awarded the Templeton Prize (795,000 GBP or approx. 1.4 million US dollars in 2006) for Progress in Religion, which he mostly donated to the Ian Ramsey Centre at Oxford (which he founded). Other recipients have been Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, Bill Bright, and Chuck Colson. Interestingly, the award is adjusted so it exceeds the Nobel Prize.

God’s peace be with you, Arthur.

I imagine everyone reading this is familiar with those “life checklists,” those lists of things you want to do in your life. Whether written down or merely stuck up in your head, I imagine everyone has them. Be it “learn Japanese,” or “eat a grasshopper,” we all have those things that we either want to do once, or make it an ingrained habit to do them. Personally, I’m trying to read more generally, read more poetry, and bring my life into some semblance of order (it’s going slow).

I’ve also really wanted to go see the local symphony perform. I haven’t always desired to do this, but it’s been on my mind for a couple years, especially since I’ve become enraptured with Mozart. There’s just something about his work that gets to me; moreso even than other classical composers. I don’t know what it is. Last year I believe they performed his Mass in C Minor (which is astounding) and my roommate and I had talked about going but never did.

This year they had Mozart’s Requiem on the bill, and we just couldn’t pass it up. Season tickets in hand, we headed downtown to the Kansas City Lyric Theater, got our seats, and experienced something that I daresay everyone should attempt to at least once in their life. It helps that the Requiem is my absolute favorite piece by Mozart. I suppose I might not have been so happy with a piece I was less familiar with (understanding the Latin pays off), but still, it would probably be worth it. The sound was incredible, and deeply moving.

Read more »

If you’ve been following the news lately you know how Muslims around the world have responded negatively towards remarks in Pope Benedict XVI’s speech at the university of Regensburg. For the sake of a coherent post, I’ll summarize. In the first part of the speech, Benedict quoted the medieval emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, who, in a dialogue with a “learned Persian” said the following:

“Show me just what Mohammad brought that was new and there you will find things only bad and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Now making the assumption that Benedict intended to claim the thoughts and intentions of Palaiologos as his own, Muslims around the world have made death threats, burned the current pope in effigy, and so on (in fairness many of these actions may have been made by extremist groups). The problem is that the quote is taken entirely out of context. The full text of the pope’s speech has hardly anything to do with Islam or Muhammed at all. In fact, it’s a discourse on the proper interworkings of faith and reason. And I must say, it’s quite good. Benedict expounds upon the Greek philosophical roots of reason in Christianity, and the trend towards subjective reinterpreting of the gospel (a stunning indictment of the Emergent movement).

Read more »

Things like these little lists float around the net all the time so I thought I’d give this one a try.

1. One book that changed your life: Grendel by John Gardener

Perhaps an odd choice; allow me to explain. My senior year of high school I had the football coach for English class. We took an instant dislike to each other, but I managed to learn a bit and he managed to teach fairly well despite our differences.

During the lessons on early English, we read Beowulf, as I imagine many seniors have, but afterwards the teacher had us read Grendel, which if you’ve ever read you will realize it is quite a departure from the original tale. I thought the retelling was genius, especially the sermonizing to Grendel on the part of the dragon. It really made me look at literature in a different light.

Coming across those things that twist your thinking is one of the best reasons to read.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Cryptonomicon

Sometimes I just want to veg out in front of some Neal Stephenson. I should really go through the whole Baroque Cycle but its density frightens me.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island: The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

Assuming that the island was truly barren and I already had a copy of the Bible.

4. One book that made you laugh: Anything by Dave Barry

I’ve wasted days reading his books.

5. One book that made you cry: Peace Like A River by Leif Enger

If you haven’t read this one (and like randomly inserted cowboy poetry) then give it a shot. It’s really very good. The movie’s coming out soon so get it in your brain before Hollywood destroys it.

6. One book that you wish had been written: Apologetics Curriculae: Suggestions For Classes by C.S. Lewis

I can dream, can’t I?

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the book. The story was really good, but the whole objectivisim thing… yeesh. I’d probably throw The Origin of Species out there too

8. One book you’re currently reading: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

If anyone wants to know why Christians are so dumb this is the book to read.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Moral Values And The Idea Of God by William Ritchie Sorley

I’ve had this on my to-read list for 3 years now. Laziness is a curse.

There you have it. I have maybe 20 books in my house that I’ve bought but haven’t read. Sometimes I think I should burn the TV and my computer (but then how would I update this blog? hmmm…)