Reading List

Topic: Reading

Suggested to me to read:

Flannery O'Connor (suggested by JJM)

Walker Percy
Love in the Ruins
Moviegoer

Gene Wolfe
Nightside the Long Sun (four volumes in two)
"It's about a priest on a sci-fi planet who gets "saved" on the first page, and then begins on a journey to understand who the God is who saved him. Great reading. RC author. Lots of biblical imagery, etc." PG rated by Burke.

John Buchan (suggested by Tom Clark)
Sick Heart River
Witchwood

Susan Howatch (suggested by Wayne Larson)
Glittering Images "it's about sex, Karl Barth, and spiritual direction"
review: http://tinyurl.com/8bken

TG's list:
Fyodor Dostoevsky. Devils (sometimes titled as The Possessed, or Demons); The Brothers Karamazov; Crime
& Punishment.

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

Chaim Potok

Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose; Foucault's Pendulum; The Island of
the Day Before

Graham Greene- many classics. The Power and the Glory is perhaps his best-known.

Jane Austen - Mansfield Park, hands down.

Anthony Trollope. A great, prolific English writer from the 19th
century. "Discovered inside a Graham Greene novel. If
you read nothing else by him, be sure to read Barchester Towers."

Walker Percy

Topic: Reading

Any comments on Walker Percy, who wrote Love in the Ruins and Moviegoer?

Limited Authority within the Marriage Covenant

Topic: Marriage Covenant

A few months back a discussion arose about Doug Wilson's counsel that (under certain important and well defined circumstances) a husband should involve the elders of the church if his wife would not keep the house in order. I did not spend much time on that discussion but was pretty sure that he would advocate the same type of thing regarding a man who was shirking his duties as a husband or father. I couldn't remember where I might have read that. Well I just found one such place though there are probably more. Nancy Wilson in her column Femina in the April 2005 Credenda (http://www.credenda.org/issues/15-3femina.php) devotes the entire column to just such a scenario. And so it does not appear that (horrors) it might have been published apart from his blessing, I found it on his blog under "Uppity Calvinist Women" (http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=1234)

Without entering the actual discussion, this points out a coupla things: First, you have to read things in context. Always. Second, discussions without trust will often be arguments. I trust Doug Wilson (having met him and Nancy more than once) and so trust that what he says will probably make sense and not give true offense. But if a person doesn't trust either Doug Wilson or Doug Roorda, it will be difficult or impossible to even have a discussion.

Maybe I'll comment further later. Right now, I'll say that Doug and Nancy Wilson have made a good case for covenantal responsibility of all in covenantal relationship, which limited authority of all in authority. If a wife is unfaithful to her calling, it is a problem that ultimately may require church discipline. This is not because there is something wrong or weak about wives; rather it is just a subset of the truth that if any Christian is unfaithful to his calling, it is a problem that ultimately may require church discipline. It is also a corollary to the truth that if a husband is unfaithful to his calling, it is a problem that ultimately may require church discipline.

Niet waar?