“Finally, in reading the works of Tolstoi, Turgenev, Dostoevski, Gorki, Chehkov, Andreev, and others, what is the general impression produced on the mind of a foreigner? It is one of intense gloom. Of all the dark books in fiction, no works sound such depths of suffering and despair as are fathomed by Russians.”

from Essays on Russian Novelists by William Lyon Phelps, p.78

On Rand as a Totalitarian:

“Objectivism can be a wonderfully appealing religion substitute for disaffiliated Jews and Catholics from the middle class who turn to it with mania formerly reserved for their ancestoral religion–and also to the sons and daughters of Old American WASPS, brought up in the Protestant ethic of hard work and self-sufficiency. It is a closed system of ideas, even more so than the conservative Catholicism in vogue until the middle sixties. Under the most doctrinaire of Catholic upbringings there is a certain margin for flexibility. The boundaries are clearly defined, but you are permitted an area of deviation from the straight and narrow before stepping onto the wild shores of heresy. To a lesser extent the same holds true for Judaism.

Not so under the tutelage of the Rand.

Objectivism is an inflexible package deal. Ayn Rand, having established herself as a radical individualist, an uncompromising mudracker and free thinker by the 1950’s, then proceeded to ereect a tight system of logic embracing every conceivable area of human endeavor. Economics, politics, psychology, child-rearing, sex, literature, even cigarette-smoking–Rand has written about them all, issuing her pronouncements on each subject in turn. Curiously enough, for a woman who started out as a champion of the independent mind, she began to consider her own ideas as natural corollaries of truth and objectivity.

‘Objective reality’ was what Rand said it was.

‘Morality’ was conformity to the ethic of Ayn Rand.

‘Rationality’ was synonymous with the thinking of Ayn Rand.

To be in disagreement with the ideas of Ayn Rand was to be, by definition, irrational and immoral.”

(from It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille p.15-16)

On The Place of Humor in Objectivism:

“Smiling, when it happened at all, was indulged in surrepitiously, since humor in the Objectivist handbook was considered immoral and anti-life, a device contrived to destroy man’s capacity of greatness”

(from It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille p.22)

On The Objectivist Theory of Litearture

“My second crisis of conscience revolved around the Randian theory of literature. For someone whose tastes in literature ran the gamut from Hemingway to Maugham to Fitzgerald to Steinbeck to Duerrenmatt to Cheever to Mailer to Salinger to Evelyn Waugh to Perelman to Vonnegut, naturalists and satirists to the last, it was a bit difficult to accept the theory that naturalism and comedy were immoral and anti-life, or that Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming were the greatest living practitioners of the romanticism of Victor Hugo”

(from It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille p.23)

The excommunication of Murray Rothbard:

“The falling away of Murray Rothbard began..Shortly afterward it became known that Rothbard’s wife, Joey, was a devout Protestant, a practicing Christian who actually believed that faith an altruism had a positive moral value. When the last tremours caused by this revelation finally faded away, a pall of silence fell over the living room. There was a Christian in the house…a real, live, breathing Protestant who admitted belief in the existence of a Supreme Being! A heretic such as this was occupying the armchair in Ayn Rand’s living room. And was married to one of Rand’s most gifted protoges [Murray Rothbard], no less, who now sat beside her with a look of villainous unconcern on his face.

Well, if Murray Rothbard’s wife was a Christian there could only be one logical explanation for it: she had obviously never read Ayn Rand’s proof that a Supreme Being does not, did not, will not, and could not exist. Ever

…This incident marked the beginning of the end of Murray Rothbard’s eminent position in the Objectivist hierarchy…[h]e…had begun to question the wisdom of many Randian attitudes on political, and particularly, historical affairs. He compounded his crime of being happily married to a practicing altruist at the following meeting when he refused to leave his wife and take a more rational mate.

…Shortly afterward there was a meeting at which he found himself denounced for not smoking cigarettes.

…Since it was unthinkable for anyone to leave the Randian nest of his own accord, and emergency meeting of meeting of the Senior Collective was called to hear the various charges of deviationism that had been compiled against Rothbard over the past six months.”

(from It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille p.29-33)

Genesis 25:25 – body hair

Genesis 25:30 – stew

Numbers 19:2 – heifer

II Kings 3:22 – water

Job 16:6 – face (from crying)

Proverbs 23:31 – wine

Isaiah 1:18 – sins

Isaiah 63:2 – apparel

Nahum 2:3 – shield

Zechariah 1:8, 6:2 – horse

Matthew 16:2-3 – sky (weather)

Revelations 6:4 – horse

Revelations 12:3 – dragon

“In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington’s C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.”

– Robert F. Kennedy in Palin’s Big Oil infatuation (Sept.24 2008)

“I have always been alive to the fact that I am not one of the really big shots,” says Wodehouse. “Like Jeeves, I know my place, and that place is down at the far end of the table among the scurvy knaves and scullions.”

P.G. Wodehouse by R.B. French , p.66 (a citation from the autobiographical Over Seventy by P.G. Wodehouse)

Well, here is a similar collection for Colossians.

Introductions and Outlines and Themes:

• The Epistle to the Colossians in Louis Berkhof’s Introduction to the New Testament
• John Darby’s Synoposis of Colossians
• Atlanta Baptist University’s Intro to Colossians
• New Advent’s Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Epistles to the Colossians
• Wikipedia’s Entry for Epistle to the Colossians
• Theopedia’s Entry for Epistle to the Colossians
• Colossians: Background and Analysis by Matt Miller
• Colossians and Philemon: Introduction by N.T. Wright
• Colossians: Introduction, Argument, and Outline by Daniel B. Wallace
• Perspectival Outlines on the Epistle to Colossians from Third Mill
• New American Bible Intro to Colossians
  

Older Sermons, Commentaries, Studies

• Charles Spurgeon’s Sermons on Colossians
• John Gill’s Exposition on Colossians
• John Wesley’s Notes on Colossians
• An exposition upon the Epistle to the Colossians by Nicholas Byfield
• Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Colossians
• John Calvin’s Commentary on Colossians, etc.

Modern Sermons, Commentaries, Studies

• Ligon Duncan’s Sermons on Colossians
• Reggie Kidd’s Paul and the Colossians (Video – MOV format)
• The Gospel Coalition’s Sermons on Colossians
• Alistair Begg’s Sermon on Colossians
• David Fairchild Sermons on Colossians
• Vincent Cheung’s Commentary on Colossians (PDF)
• Gordon Fee’s Commentary on Colossians
• John Piper’s Sermons on Colossians
• Multimedia Teachings on Colossians from Xenos
• Third Millenium’s Sermons on Colossians
• Kenneth Boa’s Sermons on Colossians
• Sam Storm’s Sermons on Colossians

Pointers to Other Resources

• Spurgeon’s Commenting on Commentaries (Colossians section)
• BestCommentaries.com’s Listing for Colossians
• Reggie Kidd’s Recommended Commentaries on Colossians

Other Items Not Specific to Romans, But Helpful

• Early Christian Ante Nicine Allusions to the NT (see the entries on Matthew)
• Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament
• The Journeys of Paul from Luther Seminary
• Corpus Paulinum Mailing List
• Denver Seminary’s New Testament Exegesis Bibliography
• Overview of NT Geography by Felix Just
• Covenant Theological Seminary’s MP3 lectures for New Testament History and Theology

OK, so it’s been a while since I posted anything.  14 days since my last post, which was he only .  And only 9 posts in the New Year. I’m not the biggest slacker in the blogosphere, but for me it certainly is a slower pace than was usual not too long ago.  No quite daily expositions. Looking at the list of blogs that I link to, there are only a few blogs that have been more sluggish in February.

Life is busy! But I will try to blog a bit more regularly.  Otherwise I might be tared and feathered by my 3 readers. But of course I don’t want to speak if I have nothing to say.  As Plato once said “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”  I hope my blogging is weighted more in the direction of  “having something to say” rather than “having to say something”. And if that means posting less frequently, so be it!

Looking back at recent posts, it seems most of what I’m doing with this blog is either quoting from books I’m reading or listing books I’ve read and commenting on them. But some of it can be so random that its questionable as to who would finding it interesting as a whole.

It lamented the death of a friend. Part of it went:

He was a friend of mine

He was a friend of mine

Every time I think about him now Lord I just can’t keep from cryin’

Cause he was a friend of mine

In 1963, Roger McGuinn of the Byrds rewrote this song to make it an eulogy for President Kennedy:

He was a friend of mine, he was a friend of mine
His killing had no purpose, no reason or rhyme
He was a friend of mine

He was in Dallas town, he was in Dallas town
From a sixth floor window a gunner shot him down
He was in Dallas town

He never knew my name, he never knew my name
Though I never met him I knew him just the same
Oh he was a friend of mine

Leader of a nation for such a precious time
He was a friend of mine

This song actually caused a little bit of tension among the members of The Byrds. Before singing the song at a festival in 1967, David Crosby stated he did not accept the usual explanation of the shooting (which is to some degree affirmed in the song). The other members were upset at him for littering the performance with this conspiracy theory, at least partly because it resulted in less television coverage. This, along with other events at the festival, is probably at least partially an explanation for the split between Crosby and the rest of the group. Or at least part of the progression that led to that.

Anyways, just an interesting random history flashback.