Steven Riddle calls the Greek language much more joyful-looking and beautiful than the Latin. Perhaps the Latin is more tinged with a "bright sadness". His post recalled for me a recent reading, from the introduction to In This House of Brede:
I experienced a bit of sadness, although not very bright, in reading NRO’s John Derbyshire’s rejection of Christ, and much more of the same with respect to his uncle who died faithless. Derbyshire linked his declaration, not surprisingly, to his study of biology, the same familiar Charbyllic shores upon which the good Professor at our local church has dashed his ship. Perhaps the science is ahead of our theology. Whenever that happens there are “issues”. These issues tend to be of little importance in the hindsight of history (who, for example, has a problem reconciling Scripture that referencing four corners of the earth with the fact that the earth has been discovered to be round? Or, for most, the problem of a literal seven-day creation?) But biology certainly seems to be making our free will a bit more narrowly circumspect than we’d heretofore thought.
More disturbing than Derbyshire - who is, of course, still alive - is his telling of his Uncle Fred, a Christian who got esophogal cancer and then renounced religion, calling it all folly on his death bed. This is sort of terrifying in much the same way soldiers see their buddy get blown up in the very same foxhole. Would it be better if Fred had more timorousness, since ‘fear of the Lord’ is the beginning of wisdom? One gets a glimmer of how the martyrs were happy because they realized they were going to Heaven – they knew they were going to die in the state of grace. Let's pray for the Derb.
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