Updates, Interlocutions, and a Hiatus

As of today, I will be taking off for a couple weeks for some long-awaited time with friends and family in London, Wales, Yorkshire, and sundry places, and blogging should be quite limited during this period—though I do hope to finally put up a review of John Perry's excellent book Pretenses of Loyalty (thanks to Davey Henreckson at Reforming Virtue for putting me onto it).

Meanwhile, though, there are a number of exciting things to which I can direct your attention.  First (and perhaps not quite so exciting), I have made long-overdue updates to the other pages here at the S&P—About Me, What is the S&P?, Projects, and Writings.  The most significant changes: I have tried to bring the "What is the S&P?" description more into line with what I actually write about here these days, and I have mercilessly purged excess projects from the Projects page, reflecting my real-life purge as I try to focus more of my attentions and energies on my thesis and related work.

Second, and rather more exciting, the Two Kingdoms debates go on.  Oh yes—and on, and on, and on, no doubt.  Matt Tuininga, not content with one rebuttal to my original post, posted five (here, here, here, here, and here), with which I interacted in a few comments, though whether any clarification was thereby achieved, I leave it to you to judge.  This impending trip has not left me leisure for a full-blown response, chock full of big bloc quotes and footnotes, but fortunately, Peter and Steven at The Calvinist International have happily stepped in to provide such a response, which will be forthcoming any day now—I recommend you check in on TCI every ten minutes or so this weekend. ;-)

As if Tuininga's responses were not enough, Darryl Hart has now kindly jumped into the fray with a post at Old Life, "Speaking of Ecclesiastical Authority."

Click to read more ...

Updates, Kindling, and Creation

Just a few notes for regular readers:

First, for the first time in six months, I have updated the Projects page of this blog, rectifying a number of frightful anachronisms.  Most of the changes are fairly minor updates, but one long-dormant project has been swept off the stage to make room for an exciting newly-hatched one.  Let me emphasize again that if you have interests in any of the areas described in these projects, I would love to hear from you and profit from your input.  The second project, the Mercersburg Theology Study Series, is at last nearing a significant milestone, as the first volume nears completion and we prepare to launch a website--a one-stop shop for all things Mercersburg.  Stay tuned for that.  In the meantime --

-- Second, my book, The Mercersburg Theology and the Quest for Reformed Catholicity, is now available on Kindle!  So if you're an avid e-reader who's interested in an idiosyncratic and unstable mix of Reformed theology, Hegelianism, and Anglo-Catholicism, go check it out! ;-)

Third, my bandwidth-devouring series on English cathedrals that I visited last month will be drawing to an end with the lovely Wells Cathedral tomorrow, and I'll at last begin posting the long-promised series from my friend, Brad Belschner, on Creation and Evolution (delayed till now due to the unfortunate theft of his laptop), which will give me the opportunity to focus almost wholly on some writing deadlines--though I'll probably intersperse some themes of my own on familiar themes while the Creation series is ongoing.

At Last--Series!

I am glad to finally be able to announce a long-intended upgrade--the addition of links to series of posts (for instance, the series on McCormack's Croall lectures back in January, or the series on coercion back last September), so you can see all the posts in each set in one place.  It's pretty clumsy right now, since the "series" page is actually simply based on a unique tag, and since the widget is displaying a redundant "Series" heading right now.  But it's better than nothing.  So just take a gander over at that left-hand sidebar, second section from the top, and you'll find them all there.

Happy Birthday S&P!

Last Friday, July 15, marked the first birthday of the Sword and the Ploughshare in its present incarnation, a dramatic upgrade from its old home on www.johannulusdesilentio.blogspot.com, and with a much more memorable URL.  Blogging here for the past year has been an immense pleasure because of the wonderful opportunities for conversation I've had with friends old and new.  Of all the many things I've learned over the past year, and the many ways my convictions have evolved and matured, probably half has come from my reading, and half has come from this blog.  I particularly thank Donny and Bradley for keeping me honest with their penetrating questions on what seems like every post, Byron Smith for his immense store of relevant statistics on any question economical or ecological, and Peter E. for guiding me to a much richer understanding of the Protestant political-theological tradition.  

In its first year, the Sword and the Ploughshare has hosted 172 posts, 1180 comments, and perhaps a thousand visitors, and new people are coming along and joining the discussion all the time. Here's a recap of some of the year's highlights:

Click to read more ...

Less is More

Over the past couple weeks, I've been doing such much-needed blog renovations upon the principle, "Less is more."  

You will see the fruits of this pruning in at least three significant places.  
1) The Tag Cloud.  Many of you may have noticed that in recent months the tag cloud has swollen to unmanageable proportions.  If it was still a cloud, it was undoubtedly a cumulonimbus, and probably one with large hail to boot.  I've cut it back down to a modest cumulus cloud by only displaying tags that have been used three times or more.  While this has the unsatisfying result of further marginalizing the already marginalized, whisking neglected topics entirely out of sight, it's the best solution I have at present.  

2) The "Resources" page.  When I set this blog up, I set up a page called "Links, Library, and More," called just "Resources in the header bar.  This was a cool idea, supposed to include an extensive list of websites and books on important issues that occupied my reflections, so that if, for instance, you wanted to learn more about economic ethics than just my own opinion here, you would know some good places to look.  Unfortunately, I never found time to get this page more than half-complete, if that.  While I still hope to finalize it at some point, it seems better for now to display no page than a lame, incomplete page.

3) The "Writings" page.  I was planning to stop making all the papers on this page directly downloadable, and make them downloadable only upon request; however, this proved too difficult from a logistical point of view, so they are all still downloadable.  But I have removed any papers that I thought were mediocre or else just so quirky and idiosyncratic as to be confusing to anyone outside the NSA Master's program (which, as it consisted of five students at most, would be pretty much everyone).  If for any reason you still want them, then just email me.  I have also updated all the other stuff on this page.

Additionally, you will find various minor changes to the sidebars, some of which have been reshuffled for symmetry and updated where outdated, and minor updates on the Projects page.  I hope that all these renovations will ensure that you have a pleasant stay at the Sword and the Ploughshare, and come back to see us again soon. ;-)