Safe Haven

5 Thoughts For Today 5. We skipped the spring after the extended winter, and went right to summer. St. Louis, everybody! 4. It probably won't rain until September 30, now. 3. Yes, this is Watergate-level bad, Mr. President. Better get out now. And if you're lucky, Don Cheadle will star in a semi-sympathetic biopic in 30 years. 2. OK, it will be Jaden Smith. 1. Anybody who hopes Gosnell goes to Hell REALLY doesn't understand the gravity of what they say.

We sat in section 147. That is essentially field-level, to the right of home plate. We could hear the pop of the catcher's glove, and the crack of the bat. It was plain to me that the umpire at home was "squeezing" the pitchers; that is, he wasn't calling strikes. As a result, the score was 3-3 after 2 innings. The Mets as a club are in a bad way. They didn't have a chance without the extra walks granted by the stingy umpire. In all frankness, I did say that both Stevie Wonder and Ronnie Milsap could better call the game. In my defense, I did not yell this at the umpire; I merely shared it with my mother. Lance Lynn, who was the starting pitcher for the Cardinals, shut down the Mets for 5 consecutive innings before the Cardinals scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 7th. They pinch-hit for him in that inning, so he was correctly and justly awarded a win. Those runs were the winning margin. There is a magic to baseball, and to these Cardinals. It is very early, bu...

1. Communion with God is the fulfillment of the human person; 2. God is offering that communion, and indeed, obligates man to seek it; 3. That communion requires of man the total submission of himself to God in a loving, filial relationship; 4. The purpose of theology is to know how to enter into that relationship; (and secondarily, to begin to understand the nature of it) 5. The basis or driving force of theology is God's self-revelation for the purpose of communion with man; 6. God cannot deceive or be deceived; 7. Therefore, God must safeguard the truths of theology and make them accessible, based upon His nature and intent.

Actually, with profuse apologies, knowing God is not like knowing your auto mechanic in an important way. I absolutely agree that natural knowledge, having been forced to acquire a level of certitude well beyond what is required for living and acting, caused a severe curtailing of  what humans thought they could know. We moved from epistemic realism to idealism and nominalism, and now, a rigid empiricism rules the day. We cannot simply say that natural knowledge has been limited by bad philosophy, though it has. We must also preserve the truth that theology requires a higher certainty still. If theology--even after all caveats, qualifications, and disagreements about sources of revelation are laid aside--does not ultimately ground its conclusions in God, who cannot deceive or be deceived, it serves no purpose. In other words, we need absolute certainty in theology, unlike in other fields. For one to say, "I do not need intellectual certainty," one is first failing to disting...