Ron Paul and the Practice of Medicine

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s2smodern



Ron Paul is a man of principal.  Here is how one physician, who has practiced medicine for decades in Texas, decided to operate.  If you go here, you will see his principles for practicing medicine, and how he chose to care for the poor.

David Lyle Jeffrey and the Nature of Learning

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s2smodern



I think this essay by David Lyle Jeffrey is one of the best things in print on the nature of learning.  It is titled, "The Pearl of Great Wisdom: The Deep and Abiding Biblical Roots of Western Liberal Education."  I use it often when I teach, and have re-read it numerous times.  Jeffrey is arguing that in the western tradition after the first century (particularly in its pre-modern form), learning was often a means to wisdom, and a wisdom centered on the reading and interpretation of Scripture.  Thank you David Jeffrey for this essay.  It can be found here at the web-site of Touchstone Magazine.

P.D. James and Modernity

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s2smodern

Gerald Bray recently shared this quote from the inimitable P.D. James, and I could not resist posting it here.  P.D. James has written a number of wonderful books, mainly murder mysteries.  Her main protagonist is Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard.  This quote is taken from The Book of Common Prayer, ed. Prudence Dailey (Continuum, 2011):

"We live in an age notable for a kind of fashionable silliness and imbued with a restless desire for change. It sometimes seems that nothing old, nothing well-established, nothing which has evolved through centuries of experience and loving use escapes our urge to diminish, revise or abolish it. Above all every organisation has to be relevant - a very fashionable word - to the needs of modern life, as if human beings in the twenty-first century are somehow fundamentally different in their needs and aspirations from all previous generations. A country which ceases to value and learn from its history, neglects its language and literature, despises its traditions and is unified only by a common frenetic drive for getting and spending and for material wealth, will lose more than its nationhood; it will lose its soul. Let us cherish and use what we still precariously hold. Let us strive to ensure that what has been handed down to us is not lost to generations to come."

Did the Church Fathers Promote Allegorical Interpretation?

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s2smodern


As far as I am concerned, Peter Leithart and Lewis Ayres are two of the sharper tools in the shed.  Both are fine scholars and have done wonderful work.  Leithart reports on a recent conference where Lewis Ayres (of the University of Durham) argued in a paper that the early church fathers were not necessarily being "innovative" when they used allegorical interpretation.  On the contrary, suggests Ayres (and here I am simply relying on Leithart's report), allegorical interpretation was already around.  The early church fathers--against the backrop of widespread allegorical interpretation--actually insisted on more of a "literal" interpretation than was the norm at the time.  I look forward to reading Ayres' paper.  Leithart's post is at his web site here.