Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 21

Should We Conform to Reality, or Should Reality Conform to Us?

In a review of Jonah Goldberg’s The Suicide of the West in The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson quotes from C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man.  Lewis is showing the similarity between magic and technology, and, in doing so, brings up two different assumptions about how we should relate to the world. From C. S. Lewis’ […]

Does Vocation Allow a Spy to Employ Sex as an Espionage Tactic?

In our recent post, The Vocation of a Spy, we discussed whether espionage is a legitimate vocation from God, and, if it is, does the vocation authorize the morally problematic activities that a spy must engage in–deception, lying, tempting others to betray their country, etc. Sometimes, in recent history, this would include the “enhanced interrogation” […]

Are Evangelicals Now Dwindling Like Mainline Liberals?

According to a new study, the number of white evangelicals is dropping precipitously, to the point that there are now more Americans who profess “no religion” (21%) than there are who claim to be “evangelicals” (13%). So finds the study sponsored by ABC News and the Washington Post.  Between 2003 and 2017, the percentage of evangelicals in […]

Defending Child-Killing in the Name of Cultural Relativism

In the jungles of Brazil, some tribes kill children who are disabled, who were born to single mothers, and who are twins.  The Brazilian legislature is considering a bill outlawing these practices.  But anthropologists and other postmodernists are opposing the bill on the grounds that child-killing is part of these tribes’ culture. So reports the […]

Tom Wolfe, the Literary Scourge of Progressives, Dies

Tom Wolfe, 88, has died. The pioneer of “New Journalism,” which uses fictional techniques–an interior point of view, dialogue, thoughts, action, description, and a creative style–to write non-fiction, Wolfe later turned to fiction.  At a time when most novelists were writing interior narratives of consciousness, Wolfe made the case for big, sweeping novels about the outside […]

The Abdication of the Medical Profession

The medical profession enjoys some of the highest level of respect in the country, and rightly so.  Physicians, nurses, and other health-care workers do amazing work in healing our afflictions and saving our lives.  But they are human beings, susceptible to cultural pressures like everyone else.  So I hope we can ask without ingratitude whether […]

How the Commandments Define Civil Society (and What This Means for Abortion)

The always-interesting Peter Leithart, a fellow Patheos blogger, discusses Systematic Theology, II: The Works of God (2001) by the late Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson. one of a series of posts on the Ten Commandments.  Leithart doesn’t always agree with him, nor would we more conservative Lutherans, Jenson being of the ELCA variety. However, I was struck by […]

The Vocation of a Spy

Normally, the leadership of important government agencies like the CIA goes to politicians, campaign allies, or career bureaucrats.  This spoils system approach is not always bad, resulting in some effective leadership as well as some that is less effective.  This time, though, the president has nominated to head the nation’s spy agency an actual spy. […]

“Now He Is Very Near”: Luther on the Ascension

More on the Ascension of Christ. . . .I keep reading on evangelical sites that with His Ascension, Jesus says goodbye, that He left at the most inopportune time, that the disciples now must carry on after Jesus is gone, that Jesus isn’t with us anymore until He returns.  Such laments about the absence of […]

The “Incels” and the Right to Sex

Last month a man in Toronto drove his car into a crowd of people, killing 10.  His self-described motive?  To strike out against women, none of whom will have sex with him.  His Facebook page proclaimed the advent of “the Incel Rebellion.” The term derives from “Involuntary Celibate.”  Another Incel terrorist struck in 2014, in […]