YouTube – Israeli TV airs telephone call to father after children killed -English.
POSTSCRIPT: A spokesman for Israel said that the military was conducting a thorough investigation about what happend, but at this point they didn’t know for sure that the missile hadn’t come from Hamas. I don’t assume that all Israeli apologists are lying, so I’m waiting to see what is determined to be true about the cause of death.
Regardless of the apparent public opposition to the bailout, the Senate voted 52 to 42 to release the remaining funds.
via Americans say: TARP not working, stop spending – Jan. 16, 2009.
Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us. –Council of Chalcedon (451 A. D.)
(Warning: the usual Christian disclaimers for pop cultural references apply here.)
A super being from a higher plane who is both superior and vulnerable due to her assumptin of (quasi!) humanity.
One thing that can really help a person explain the theology of the incarnation is watching the mostly paganish show Buffy the Vampire Slayer or its spin-off Angel.
In that fictional world, demons are commonly portrayed in a way that mostly resembles space aliens. They usually come from other dimensions rather than planets (one episode in BtVS season four even crossed that line making it even harder to differentiate between fantasy and scifi) but they are pretty much creatures that could easily fit in a Star Trek episode.
But in some shows the principle is revealed that these demons have gone through alterations to come into the human plane. They are “mixtures” or “impure” to some extent (vampires are espcially impure hybrids with human beings and thus looked down upon). So they are superior in strength and durability usually, but they are still ultimately defeatable if one has super strength of one’s own, or the proper battle axe, or a handy source of high-voltage electricity. Indeed, when dealing with incorporeal demonic forces, the common strategy is to find some way to get the being to materialize and then deal with the monster that results via weaponry. Continue reading
Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.
This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.
The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.
Read the rest: Op-Ed Columnist – Where Sweatshops Are a Dream – NYTimes.com.
Radley Balko asks, “What does it take to get a police officer fired?”
Shoving a 71-year-old Walmart greeter to the ground and, when another customer came to assist, shoving that customer through a glass door?
Nope, even though that particular officer has had several complaints filed against him, and was involved in another altercation a year earlier.
How about three DWI incidents within a one-year span, including one in which the officer ran a roadblock, then had to be tasered, pepper-sprayed, and wrestled to the ground; another in which he hit another car, then left the scene of the accident; and another in which he fell asleep in his cruiser in front of a school, while in drive, with his foot resting on the brake?
Nope. It took a fourth DWI incident to finally get him suspended.
How about an officer with an otherwise stellar record, who has a reputation in the department for honesty, but who became an outspoken critic of the war on drugs, and on one occasion declined to arrest a man after finding a single marijuana plant growing outside the man’s home?
We are really heading into a bad bad place in the US in many ways.
Today’s interview with N.T. Wright (Bishop of Durham) concerns his new book: Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision.
Justification represents Wright’s response to John Piper’s The Future of Justification (see my commentary here) and is scheduled for release in the UK in February by SPCK and in the U.S. in May by IVP.
My previous two interviews with Bishop Wright can be accessed here and here.
Trevin Wax: How does this robust discussion on justification between you and John Piper help the church to better fulfill its purpose in the world?
N.T. Wright: How does the robust discussion between me and Piper help the church better to fulfil its purpose in the world? Well, I hope it will, and that’s part of the main point of what I’m saying.
My anxiety about what has now been seen as the traditional Reformed view (though there are many traditional Reformed views!) is that it focuses all attention on ‘me and my salvation’ rather than on ‘God and God’s purposes’, which – as we see in the Gospels, and in e.g. Romans 8 – are much wider than just my salvation. This book, for me, thus follows from Surprised by Hope and the other things I’ve been writing in the same vein.
More generally, I hope that the book will alert people to the fact that the underlying discussion is really about taking Scripture seriously – (a) the whole Scripture, not just selected parts, and (b) Scripture as the final arbiter, over against all human traditions including our own! That cannot but help the church in its purpose in the world . . .
via Interview with N.T. Wright – Responding to Piper on Justification « Kingdom People.
In the Financial Times, I argued that, unlike with Hillary Clinton, there were several reasons why one could be optimistic that Barack Obama would follow a pro-trade policy despite “prudential” protectionist talk on the primaries circuit (“Obama’s free-trade credentials top Clinton’s”, March 3 2008). But the US president-elect’s eloquent silence on trade issues – and his failure to balance his protectionist appointments with powerful trade proponents – require that we abandon these illusions and sound an alarm.
via FT.com / Comment / Opinion – Obama and trade: an alarm sounds. Read the rest.
Anitboycott Compliance.–a rather revealing website, at least to this naive American.
Karen DeCoster’s blog reminded me that “National Bankruptcy Day” is coming. Read the entry and follow the links. Does anyone doubt that this law was promoted by retailers to kill competition from resale stores?
Of course, what this really means is that all goods are now worth less since their longetivity has just been decimated. Once again the state makes the people within its grasp poorer.
Hard not to hate the state when it so obviously hated you first.