Book of the Month June/July 2023: Stealing the General

 This book of the month is dedicated to eight-year-old me, sitting enthralled on the living room floor, glued to the screen while Fess Parker battled to change the course of the War Between the States by wrecking a Confederate railroad in The Great Locomotive Chase. That movie intersected two of my great loves: trains and warfare. I recommend it to all of you who haven't seen it. And if you watch it and want to know more about what really happened, you should pick up this book. 

Russell S. Bonds' Stealing the General is a relatively recent (2006) monograph on the Civil War event usually called the Andrews Raid. During the early days of the war, a group of Western Union soldiers volunteered to go south in disguise, under a civilian blockade runner named James Andrews. They commandeered a train near Atlanta and headed north. The plan was to wreck track, bridges, and telegraph lines all the way to Chattanooga until the Confederate Army was unable to reinforce the town. 

It nearly worked, but the train's conductor, William Fuller, refused to admit defeat and chased the train; first on foot and then with a series of locomotives. He raised the alarm and prevented the raiders from doing much damage until the army caught up with them. The Yankees were imprisoned, but even there the story didn't end--there were two spectacular prison breaks, a hanging, and enough newspaper headlines and panic to drive up the price of ink. When the surviving raiders finally made it back to the north, they were awarded the very first Medals of Honor--still the nation's highest military decoration.

Bonds writes well and easily, and he evaluates the various first- and second-hand sources with a clear eye. Rather than simply accepting some of the famous accounts of the time, he compares them--both to the terrain and to other primary sources. The result is an insightful work that picks apart both the Disney version and some of the laudatory news myths of the time to show what happened, why it happened, and how the participants told it in their own words. 

This is, quite simply, good history. And if you have an interest in trains, the Civil War, spying, guerilla warfare, trains, the Medal of Honor, perspective, or trains, you should find a copy and enjoy the chase.

Commonplaces: June/July 2023

[On John VII 37, “Let him come to Me and drink”] “Nor let him go to the heathen philosophy, which does but beguile men, lead them into a wood, and leave them there; but let him go to Christ, admit his doctrine, submit to his discipline, believe in him; come to him as the fountain of living waters, the giver of all comfort.”—Matthew Henry, Commentaries

“Wherever a new generation takes up the attack against the resisting forces of evil or against a tense obsession with a security which clings to the delusion that the disharmony of the world is fundamentally curable by cautious and correct “tactics,” it is above all necessary to maintain a lively and vigilant awareness that such fighting can only reach beyond sound and fury if it draws its strongest forces from the fortitude of the spiritual life, which dares to submit unconditionally to the governance of God. Without a consciously preserved connection with these reserves of strength, all struggle for the good must lose its genuineness and the inner conviction of victory, and in the end can lead only to the noisy sterility of spiritual pride.”—Joseph Peiper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

“Weak people are those who know the truth, but who maintain it only as far as it is in their interest to do so. Beyond that, they abandon it.”—Pascal, Pensees

“Indeed, contemporary debunking of the author and the author's explicit intentions has proceeded at such a pace that it seems at times as if literary criticism has become a jolly game of ripping out an author's shirt-tail and setting fire to it.”—D. Stienmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis” Theology Today"

“Jesus says, ‘Take freely.’ He wants no payment or preparation. He seeks no recommendation from our virtuous emotions.”—Spurgeon, Morning and Evening M. June 13

“We dread fostering men’s favorite notion that a little church-going and sacrament-receiving—a little patching, and mending, and whitewashing, and gilding, and polishing, and varnishing, and painting the outside—is all that his case requires. Hence we protest with all our heart against formalism, sacramentalism, and every species of mere external or vicarious Christianity.”—J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied

“There are times when there is a mine of deep meaning in our Lord’s words, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” To such times we have come.”—Ryle, Knots Untied

“There are only two sorts of people who can truly be called reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart, because they do not yet know Him.”—Pascal, Pensees

“Armis munimenta, non munimentis arma tuta esse debent.”—Livy, IX.xxiii

“Ferte signa in hostem!”—Livy, IX.xxiii

“Friendships that are acquired at a price and not with greatness and nobility of spirit are bought, but they are not owned; and when the time comes they cannot be spent.”—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Lines in Pleasant Places

Psalm XVI: The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. For the LORD is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; you maintain my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

Lord, we know that we are to look to you alone for refuge, and when we are safely in that refuge we are to praise you for what you have given. Our thanksgivings are to be a confirmation of your goodness. They are to be our testimony before the world that you are a God who answers, unlike all those silent gods who cannot even speak their own names. So we come before you to offer the cup of our praising hearts, back to the one who gave them in the first place.

Thank you for what has fallen in pleasant places: for our wonderful community of the saints, which may gather without danger or interruption for the gifts of the word and sacraments. And you do not bless us alone, but all your people in the West have this unappreciated gift. In particular, we thank you for the gathering of saints in Denver called Redeemer Community Church. May Pastor Rodland and their elders shepherd them well during a time of growth.

Book of the Month May 2023: Why Liberalism Failed

 “The cultivation of virtue requires the thick presence of virtue-forming and virtue-supporting institutions, but these are precisely the institutions and practices that liberalism aims to hollow and eviscerate in the name of individual liberty. In a deep irony, liberalism claims legitimacy based upon democratic consent, yet it ultimately hollows out the prospects for functioning democracy.”

If you pay any attention at all to my commonplaces for each month (and why would you?) you might have noted that most of the ones from last month were from one book: Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen. This is not a perfect book, but it is a good one. If I were pressed to name three books to help someone understand America's current political moment, they would be Carl Truman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Christopher Caldwell's The Age of Entitlement, and this one.

Commonplaces--May 2023

 

“Domesticity itself is altered beyond recognition; women no longer marry to help their husbands get a living, but to help them spend their income.”—Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture

“The cultivation of virtue requires the thick presence of virtue-forming and virtue-supporting institutions, but these are precisely the institutions and practices that liberalism aims to hollow and eviscerate in the name of individual liberty. In a deep irony, liberalism claims legitimacy based upon democratic consent, yet it ultimately hollows out the prospects for functioning democracy.”—Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed

“Yet this [government] expansion continues, largely as a response to people’s felt loss of power over the trajectory of their lives in so many distinct spheres—economic and otherwise—leading to demands for further intervention by the one entity even nominally under their control. Our government readily complies, moving like a ratchet wrench, always in one direction, enlarging and expanding in response to civic grievances, ironically leading in turn to citizens’ further experience of distance and powerlessness.”

“Perhaps above all, liberalism has drawn down on a preliberal inheritance, and resources that at once sustained liberalism but which it cannot replenish. The loosening of social bonds in nearly every aspect of life—familial, neighborly, communal, religious, even national—reflects the advancing logic of liberalism and is the source of its deepest instability."

“In this world, gratitude to the past and obligations to the future are replaced by a nearly universal pursuit of immediate gratification: culture, rather than imparting the wisdom and experience of the past so as to cultivate virtues of self-restraint and civility, becomes synonymous with hedonic titillation, visceral crudeness, and distraction, all oriented toward promoting consumption, appetite, and detachment."

Favorite Student Blunders and Bloopers of 2022-23

 It's that time of year again--classes are over, the pressure is off, and we can all laugh at the small stuff. Here is a collection of some of my favorite mistakes, blunders, malapropisms, or slips of the 22-23 school year. If any of my students read this, don't be embarrassed--such errors simply make me laugh and love you more. Enjoy!

In the place of honor, my absolute favorite of the year: “Martin Luther wrote the 95 Theses against the Catholic practice of selling pennants.”  😆🚩🚩🚩

"To explain my upbringing of this statement, I observed an assertion that Socrates had placed forth to Adeimantus about gods, specifically, God.”

“From these questions and comments, Socrates deducted these facts into a paragraph which I will announce as follows”

“Louisa wrote many works but had limited acknowledgment until her autobiographical Little Women was released, from which, she contracted fame.”

Book of the Month April 2023: Life Together

 

“I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my human desires—all this may rather be hatred and an insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ. What love is, only Christ tells us in his Word.”

A young German pastor wrote Gemeinsames Leben in 1939, just after the Nazis had ordered him to close down his unofficial seminary for training "Confessing Church" pastors--that is, men who did not agree with the official German Lutheran embrace of Hitler and his party. That group of pastors and pastors-in-training at Finkenwalde had been a special place for him and the others; a place where the study of the Word was paramount and the resulting fellowship sweet. His reflections on that time have become the "modern classic" Life Together, first published in English in 1954. His name, of course, was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, now famous as the pastor who plotted to assassinate Hitler and died on a gallows in the last days of WWII.

Commonplaces--April 2023

 

“A great man lays upon posterity the duty of understanding him.”

“From his agonies and exultations he emerged with a great charity towards men, and something nobler than humanism. The world with all its suffering and sinning mortals was God’s world, which He had created and redeemed, and he looked upon it with a patient kindness. Of such a creed as his, and of such a temperament, quietism could not be the fruit. He must be up and doing, for he was called upon to assist in the building of the City of God….A man all his days must be busy making his soul, and forcing the world to conform to the heavenly will.”—John Buchan, Oliver Cromwell


“Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.”

“I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my human desires—all this may rather be hatred and an insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ. What love is, only Christ tells us in his Word.”

“For the mature Christian, every Scripture reading will be “too long” even the shortest one. What does this mean? The Scripture is a whole and every word, every sentence possesses such multiple relationships with the whole that it is impossible always to keep the whole in view while listening to details. It becomes apparent, therefore, that the whole of the Scriptures (and hence every passage in it as well) far surpasses our understanding.”

Book of the Month March 2023: Beau Geste

 

If the above Peanuts strip makes no sense to you, then you need to read this Book of the Month.

Percival Christopher "P.C." Wren was an English author who penned the tale Beau Geste (French for a "gallant, hopelessly romantic gesture") in A.D. 1914. It is a double-layered mystery, crossed with an epic foreign adventure, crossed with a tale of harrowing survival; the sort of story that begged to be made into an early Hollywood star-studded film. It was, too--several times!

Commonplaces--March 2023

 

“And yet in your case [Antony], as your most familiar friends are always saying, you practice declamation to evaporate your wine, not to sharpen your wits.”—Cicero, Phillipic II.xvii

“By the most rival impulses, Conscript Fathers, in critical times the scale is turned most completely, not only in all the accidents of public affairs, but principally in war, and most of all in civil war, which as a rule is governed by opinion and rumor.”—Cicero, Phillipic V.x