Barth's Calvin

It was an really interesting book, in part because Barth gives a biography of Calvin. There are also some quotes I'm interested in relating, from Theology o John Calvin. On p.22, speaking of Thomas Aquinas: "We have in his case a demonstration how often even the greatest among us, precisely in fulfilling their deepest intentions, often do not know what they are doing. The reformers engaged in close combat with late scholastics of the age of decline, about whom we say nothing today, when all the time behind these, and biding his time, stood their main adversary Thomas..." on p. 36, in talking about medieval theology, "It is the harmony of the monastery garden with its rows of cherry trees and its splashing fountains and its surrounding walls that remind us of the world with its joy and grief but also shut it out." I will be asking myself whether in my own research I try to shut out the world. and Finally, on p. 246, "God demands of us a double brokenness, the first by way of the insight that God alone is great and that w can do nothing for him and for our own justification, the second by way of the insight that we must obey this great God in faith either by what we do not do or by what we do, but at all events that we must obey him if we really believe." Something to think over if you believe, as I do, that everyone has a unique contribution to make.

I also read my partner Tony's eclectic reading: something about a British Library report on young readers who use the Internet. There are a few myths: youngsters trust authority figures more than the Internet; they are not good searchers but know only a few simple applications; they are not actually more impatient. There was also a disquisition on Obama becoming inevitably the black candidate, and not simply a candidate, and another article about lack of content in the Democratic party; a complaint about a chain of British pub that limit the drinks for people accompanied by children; an obit for Suzanne Pleshette; a discussion of whether Vladimir Nabokov's dying wish to destroy a part of a novel should be respected by his son; a history of marriage and a history of the medical clinic; a discussion of Heidegger's early article on poetry; and reviews of books on shyness and eloquence (they worked, I'll read the books).