On the Square Today

Elizabeth Scalia on Jesus’ challenge to “stand and deliver” :

Jesus is the divine teacher, and a good teacher finds the way to bring out the very best in students—not to simply teach them rote memorization (although that has its place) but to make them “deliver of themselves”; to put something more behind their answers. He does it over and over in the Gospels—makes people declare what it is they want and why they are coming to him. His challenge says, “stand and deliver—so that you may be more fully the man or woman you are, and not some prostrate creature.”

Also today, Thomas Cothran against faith in faith :

Faith, in the Christian life, has nothing to do with a subjective belief that does not admit rational justification (not even Kierkegaard quite said that), because faith begins not with the subject of faith but its object—the Trinitarian life of God. It consists not of assent to some proposition but the entrustment of one’s being to God’s providence. Faith does not originate in the individual believer’s own efforts, but is rather a gift of grace to the believer, usually received in baptism, as one means among many of participating in God’s own life.