Timothy George on Reformation Day :
It was around two o’clock in the afternoon on the eve of the Day of All Saints, October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther, hammer in hand, approached the main north door of the Schlosskirche (Castle Church) in Wittenberg and nailed up his Ninety-Five Theses protesting the abuse of indulgences in the teaching and practice of the church of his day. In remembrance of this event, millions of Christians still celebrate this day as the symbolic beginning of the Protestant Reformation. At Beeson Divinity School, for example, we do not celebrate Halloween on October 31. Instead we have a Reformation party.
Also today, Thomas Martin Cothran on the apologetics of transcendence :
When the anonymous Christian in Nicholas of Cusa’s dialogue “On the Hidden God” is asked by his pagan interlocutor to explain the difference between Christians and pagans, he answers that followers of Christ know they cannot comprehend the divine. This seems a strange mode of apologetics, one particularly unsuited for the age of science. Any strategy that would identify ignorance as a basic element of the Christian faith (indeed, as its specific difference) could hardly counter the claim that science has revealed the basic structures of nature, rendering the “God hypothesis” obsolete.
And in our third feature, George Weigel explains what voting means :
American political campaigns have never been for the squeamish. With the sole exceptions of George Washington’s two uncontested elections, every presidential campaign has seen its share of vulgarity, skullduggery, and personal disparagement. Those who imagine that “going negative” is the invention of today’s polls and focus-groups haven’t read very much about the rhetorical character of the senior Adams-Jefferson battle of 1800, the younger Adams-Jackson contest of 1824, or the Blaine-Cleveland fight of 1884, not to mention the dubious goings-on in Illinois and Texas in 1960, or in Florida in 2000.
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