Steve Holmes

Because there is literally nothing more interesting to talk about? (PS I could recommend a good book on the subject, but modesty forbids...)

'Go litel book...' (Cambridge Element arguing for a theological account of prayer--all prayer--being answered.

The harvest Moon between cathedral towers. This is an experiment, rather more edited than I usually do. Essentially, I combined two shots, one exposed for the Moon, making the rest black, and one exposed for the building, with a burnt-out blob in the middle. Does it look fake? I can't decide.

Baptising C this morning at the very spot on the beach where she once came intending suicide. She testified that that day she heard God’s voice thunder “I will write a different story”

How exactly does one get deselected as an Independent?! (South, first list seat)

‘Sumo referees carry small swords symbolising their willingness to take their own lives if they make an error’

Has anyone told the VAR folk at Stockley Park about this?

Such stats aren't published of course, but every time I read about someone who has defected from the Tories to Reform I get the sense that the average IQ of both parties is increasing slightly as a result.

Ele é capaz de se borrar em debate.

This may be the least helpful line I've ever found in a Biblical commentary, and that is a hotly-contested title: 'The contrast is made all the more vivid by the antithetical parallelism and asyndeton which characterize the structure of the verse.'

Just booked tickets to see Suzanne Vega in Edinburgh. Youngest asked 'Who is Suzanne Vega?' I suggested 'who Taylor Swift wants to be when she grows up'.

Do you regard that as evidence of a serious failure in parenting?

16yo asked me to look over her Higher English essay. Apparently my suggesting that she could 'use a gerund here' was not helpful.

Bingo! (Or, it was decreed from all eternity…) City of God IV.4

Much earlier...

Earlier... It's followed by a reference to a story about Alexander the Great and a pirate, as it happens...

Nope. Lean into the 'utterly reprobate' a bit more...

...then this evil will increase until it owns key spaces, controls appointments, reigns over cities, and oppresses diverse peoples. Its ruler calls himself ‘king’ because it looks like a nation, not because graft and fraud have been eliminated, but because they have been clothed in legal impunity'

Not a difficult one, but guess the source (my tr.):
'Without equity, then, nations are just massive criminal conspiracies … A group of people with a leader is bound together by a shared commitment; and they divide their riches by their shared rules. If utterly reprobate people are involved... 1/2

Asked a daughter who happened to be home to check over something I'd written in her area of expertise. She made several useful suggestions, and then at one point corrected my grammar. I can't quite work out whether to be utterly overjoyed or deeply offended.

Excellent seminar this morning from Simon Burton (Edinburgh), including several quotations from Cotton Mather, who was rather more direct in discussing matters theological than I had realised. I particularly liked 'metaphysics is the excrement of all the disciplines'.

I was totally committed to a trip down south this weekend. I said ‘no man may stop me’. The storm Eowyn appeared saying ‘I am no man’…

The English who fled to Frankfurt to escape Mary's persecutions had a disagreement over liturgy. They formed a theological commission, as you do. They chose Calvin, Bullinger, Peter Martyr, Viret, and Musculus. That's some intellectual firepower for a question about the liturgy of one congregation!

Forced by Uni directives to think about branding ourselves. I offered 'St Andrews Theological Academics Network,' but apparently 'SATAN' doesn't work as an acronym...

Thermal under trousers, as advertised by Marks & Spencer. I may be missing something here, but…

Article in Telegraph by Nigel Biggar entitled ‘It’s time to come off the fence: I’m a conservative.’

You mean all *that* was him sitting on the fence?

This book is very good but, if I was analysing evidence for how many fell victim to a demand that heretics be burnt at the stake, I would avoid 'no smoke without fire' type metaphors...

As tomorrow is advent Sunday, could I get in early and note that it was the bit of the home where the animals lived, and the only possible word we have for that in English is 'stable'...

2/2 My friend was not proud of their response, but admitted that they eventually snapped, looked at the uncle, and spat 'You've spent your entire life hunting the antichrist, and when he finally appears you go and vote for him!...

A friend--let's just say a US-born academic now teaching in the UK--told me a few years ago of being back in the States for family Thanksgiving. An uncle, who did Hal Lindsey, Left Behind, the works, appeared in a Maga hat, & kept talking politics... 1/2

I'm all for pedantry, but what if the Mary Shelley character finds the word 'monster' offensive and demeaning, and actually would rather be known simply as 'Frankenstein'?