Inadvertent bonus.

1. The Return of the Knee-Jerk Liberal.
2. Is God Answerable to Justice?
3. Proactivity.
4. Sucking Our Brains Out Through Our Eyes.

1

If Robert P. George says it, it’s the duty of right-minded (i.e., left-minded) intellectuals to disagree.

It’s encouraging that “knee-jerk” liberals survive. I was starting to think they’d been driven to extinction by the emergent knee-jerk conservatives.

2

Thank goodness we have the potential to improve as we (inevitably) age. Either I’ve mellowed, or Clark Carlton has gotten sharper, or both (or I’m delusional).

Carlton is a Protestant convert to Orthodox Christianity who teaches philosophy, writes and podcasts. A written offering I just discovered is a discussion of the concept of Atonement, titled Satisfactionism, from his book The Life: The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation. Excerpts:

In Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), Anselm argued that by sinning, man had committed an offence against God. (Remember that in medieval Western Europe, crimes were not committed against the state, but against the person of the monarch.) …
Before we discuss the problems with this theory, we need to say a few words about its influence. Jaroslav Pelikan writes:

More than any other treatise between Augustine and the Reformation on any other doctrine of the Christian faith, Anselm’s essay has shaped the outlook not only of Roman Catholics, but of most Protestants, many of whom have paid him the ultimate compliment of not even recognizing that their version of the wisdom of the cross comes from him, but attributing it to the Bible itself(Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries, pp. 106-107).

Justo Gonzáles agrees:

This view of the work of Christ, which was by no means the generally accepted one in earlier centuries, soon gained such credence that most Western Christians came to accept it as the only biblical one(Gonzáles, The Story of Christianity, pp. 314-315).

… There are three (at least!) theological problems with the doctrine of satisfactionism. First, it is predicated on the assumption that God has human characteristics. Second, it makes sin to be God’s problem rather than man’s. Third, it turns salvation into something wholly external to man, leaving him essentially unchanged.
… God is just, and because He does not change, He cannot simply let man “off the hook.” Justice must be satisfied.
Reread the last two sentences carefully: God cannot let man off the hook because of justice. According to this view, God Himself is subject to some sort of cosmic justice. Justice is, in a sense, greater than God.
Even in medieval times theologians realized there was a problem with this ….

Theodore the Studite, a few centuries before Anselm, expounded an Orthodox view.

3

Michael Hyatt has a proactive take on “Never Waste a Good Crisis,” which Rahm Emmanuel did not coin, but made infamous:

• If you suddenly had a heart attack, what would you wish you had done to avoid it?
• If your spouse suddenly announced that he or she wanted a divorce, what would you wish you had done to avoid it?
• If you suddenly discovered your child was on drugs, what would you wish you had done to avoid it?
• If your boss announced that you were being terminated, what would you wish you had done to avoid it?

Since he’s a motivational speaker (among other things) you probably can guess where this is going.

4

How could I not link to an article with a title as endearing as Sucking Our Brains Out Through Our Eyes? The topic, of course, is advertising.

I can’t hope to improve it. I can only say “turn off the damned TV.” And if you object to “damned,” read the article.

(Did I mention how good my new iPhone is? It’s a real chick magnet.)

* * * * *

Bon appetit!

Having become tedious even to myself, I’m Tweeting more, blogging less. View this in a browser instead of an RSS feeder to see Tweets at upper right.

I also have some succinct standing advice on recurring themes. Maybe if I link to it, I’ll blog less obsessively about it.