More on the OED volunteers (see post below)

Simon Winchester concludes his description of the vast army of volunteer readers, without whose help the whole project would have been impossible — with this tribute:

Sons of gardeners and college servants, daughters of chemists and boat-builders, ministers in all churches known to Christian (including that of Pitsligo, Banffshire) and to infidel, criminal and company and constitutional lawyers, schoolmasters from Holland and Birmingham and California and from all points between, doctors responsible for every part of body, mind, and animal, scholars of Welsh and Greek, Aramaic and Chaldean, Icelandic, Persian, Slavonic, and English place names, elderly divines, young and muscular civil engineers, theatre critics, one ophthalmic surgeon (James Dixon, author of Diseases of the Eye, 1855), mathematicians, men who were antiquarians, naturalists, surgeons (and one man — Joseph Fowler of Durham — who was all three), businessmen, novelists (including Beatrice Harraden, who wrote the breathless Ships that Pass in the Night, became a suffragette, and went on to write The Scholar's Daughter, involving much derring-do among a cast of lexicographers), phoneticians, bibliographers, an iron merchant-cum-antiquarian named Richard Heslop who gave Murray advice on mining and iron-forging terms, botanists, aldermen, naval historians, geologists and geophysicists, jurists, palaeographers, Orientalists, diplomats, museum keepers, surgeons, soldiers (W. C. Minor was both, of course), climbers (John Mitchell was killed while climbing, to Murray's unspeakable grief), zoologists, grammarians, patent officers, organists, runic archaeologists, fantasists, anthropologists, men of letters, bankers, medievalists, and Indian administrators — these and a thousand more professions and pastimes occupied those men and women who otherwise devoted hours, weeks, perhaps even years of their time to read for Murray and Bradley, and later for Craigie and Onions.  The range of interests of these hundreds was prodigious; their knowledge was extraordinary; their determination was unequalled; and yet their legacy — aside from the book itself — remains essentially unwritten.  Only their names, in long lists in the volumes, the parts, and the sections, exist to make some readers stop and wonder for a moment — just who were these people? 

*  *  *

We know these things, but we do not really know why so many people gave so much of their time for so little apparent reward.  And this is the abiding and most marvellous mystery of the enormously democratic process that was the Dictionary — that hundreds upon hundreds of people, for motives known and unknown, for reasons both stated and left unsaid, helped to chronicle the immense complexities of the language that was their own…  They became footnotes in eight-point Clarendon type in a preface to a volume of [the greatest literary enterprise of history].  That was truly their only reward — and yet in all likelihood they, and scores of others like them, surely wanted no other.   

(The Meaning of Everything, 212-215)

A notable anniversary

   Today, 29 January, marks the anniversary, in 1884, of the publication of the first segment of what was then called the New English Dictionary — later the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).  It was first published in paper-bound sections (“fascicles”) of 352 pages each (12 x 8 x 1”).  These sheaves of pages would eventually be bound together in hard covers as whole volumes — 12 in all in the first edition.

   The Dictionary was first conceived in 1858, as a project of the Philological Society of England.  It was another “imperial-scale” project undertaken with boundless optimism and energy by subjects of Queen Victoria.  The making of the Dictionary took 70 years, the complete first edition being published in 1928.

   The twelve volumes of the first edition comprised 15,490 pages of single-spaced printed text.  All 414,825 words considered at the time to make up the English language were included — defined, with preferred and variant (and even obsolete) spellings listed, etymologies recorded, and pronunciations recommended.

   In addition, the history of the use of each word was traced by means of 1,827,606 illustrative quotations, complied from over 5 million citations submitted by thousands of volunteer readers.  (I’ll make a separate entry or two about these readers.)

   “Pastor, how do you know all this?” you may ask.  Well, the fascinating story of the Oxford English Dictionary is told by Simon Winchester in The Meaning of Everything (2003).  I’ve had the book sitting on my shelf for a while, and finally got around to it, and what a wonderful story it is.

   In 1998, Winchester had written a book (Sherry gave it to me for Christmas one year) about one of the sub-stories related to the OED in his The Professor and the Madman.  It told the story of William Chester Minor — an American, a surgeon in the United States Army who served during the Civil War.  After the war Minor traveled to London where eventually he killed a man.  He was tried and found “innocent by reason of insanity” (one of the first successful uses of the “insanity defense”).  He was nevertheless confined to a lunatic asylum at Broadmoor, where he became one of the volunteer readers for the Dictionary, and a particularly good one.

   These are both wonderful books — well-written and full of interesting characters.  I recommend them highly.

   Anyway, happy anniversary OED!

James A. H. Murray served as editor of the Dictionary for 36 years — during the most formative period of its production.  Here he is pictured in the “Scriptorium” that was built behind his home in Oxford.  On the walls are hundreds of pigeon-holes into which the citation slips were sorted and stored.

Red Hot Lies

   If you are like me, you don't need someone to convince you that 90% of what we read or hear on "the News" is outright lies or truth "spun" completely out of any useful shape.  

   But if Christopher Horner — in his new book about "How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed" — is even half correct, the "red hot lies" of global climate change alarmism have risen to the level of a fanatical religious faith, and its hysterical advocates are on their own kind of "jihad" to stampede the American people into handing over more and more of their freedom — and their money — to the government regulators, who promise to "save the planet," from our fear of "global warming."

   I heard part of an interview with Horner a couple of weeks ago on C-SPAN's "Book TV," and decided his was "news" I should learn a bit more about.  I purchased a download of the unabridged book from iTunes (for less than the book itself costs!), though I wish I had the hard copy for all the footnoted documentation.  I'm about a third of the way in, and it's quite a story.

   Click here for a more extensive article about Horner and his new book.

   This is not really the story of a "vast conspiracy," but — more relevantly for those of us who want to think Christianly about everything (i.e., putting all we hear to the test — holding on to the good, rejecting evil in its many forms, 1 Thess. 5:21) — this is a stunning example of the way in which an intellectual and moral consensus in a "democracy" (arising in the humanist flow) can then become as totalitarian and propaganda-oriented as in any dictatorship.

   It is also interesting, and disheartening, to see again how the "insiders" — once they have consolidated their protected positions (in media, academia, and government) can sit safely behind their walls of privilege and protection, and systematically vilify and demonize (and, according to Horner, threaten and even persecute) their opponents, without ever being forced to come out in the open and fight fairly (e.g., by actually dealing with arguments).

   This kind of thing happens in the church as well.  Just think, for example, of all the topics and perspectives that are never represented in the pages of New Horizons.

   Well, that's enough on that.  You might want to pick this "red hot" book up and give it a look.

Political language according to Orwell

"Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."  

— George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1945)

He did it…

   According to CNN, President Obama did sign the order on Friday that struck down a rule that prohibits U.S. money from funding international family-planning clinics that promote abortion or provide counseling or referrals about abortion services.

   In signing the President said, "It is time we end the politicization of this issue."  Since when is fulfilling campaign promises to your pro-abort supporters, “de-politicizing” an issue?  

   Properly understood, “politics” is more than cynical scheming.  It is ethics enacted in the public sector.  Laws permitting and funding abortion should never be “de-politicized.”  Obama's claim is nothing more than the restoration of an ethic of death.  "All those who hate me love death," says God's Wisdom.

   What’s more, Obama promised, "In the coming weeks, my administration will initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find areas of common ground to best meet the needs of women and families at home and around the world."  Do you imagine that pro-life voices will be invited to become part of this “fresh conversation?”  Not likely.

And so it begins…

   According to news reports from anonymous officials close to the administration, President Obama was expected to sign an executive order today (one day after the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion) ending the 8-year ban on federal funds for international groups that perform abortions.

   The so-called "Mexico City policy" — which bans U.S. taxpayer money from going to international “family planning” groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion — was instituted by President Reagan in 1984, lifted by President Clinton in 1993, and reinstituted by President Bush in 2001 as (one of his first acts in office).

Wisdom for this discouraging week from Marse Robert

"The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope."  — Robert E. Lee

Roe v Wade Anniversary: YHWH and his chosen instruments

   Those of us who stand for the defense of the pre-born and biblical grounds are understandably concerned for the avowed pro-abortion commitment of our new president.  Will he make good on his campaign promises to Planned Parenthood and other death merchants?  Time will tell.

   It is comforting to remember that God has more than once raised up leaders to do his will — whether they intend to or not.  I was reading Isaiah 45 this morning, and share here with you YHWH’s words to Cyrus, his chosen instrument:

Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,

whose right hand I have grasped,

to subdue nations before him

and to loose the belts of kings,

to open doors before him

that gates may not be closed:

“I will go before you

and level the exalted places,

I will break in pieces the doors of bronze

and cut through the bars of iron,

I will give you the treasures of darkness

and the hoards in secret places,

that you may know that it is I, the Lord,

the God of Israel, who call you by your name.

For the sake of my servant Jacob,

and Israel my chosen,

I call you by your name,

I name you, though you do not know me.

I am the Lord, and there is no other,

besides me there is no God;

I equip you, though you do not know me,

that people may know, from the rising of the sun

and from the west, that there is none besides me;

I am the Lord, and there is no other. (vv. 1-6)

Get the picture?

An apt reminder for the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade

     Pro-life efforts have been an integral aspect of the work and ministry of faithful believers since the dawning of the faith in the first century. Through all the convulsions of the patristic era, into the upheaval of the medieval epoch, on toward the Renaissance and Enlightenment, through the great missions movement and the emergence of America, and into the modem period, the true church has always stood for the sanctity of all innocent life—in contradistinction to the pagan consensus for abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and euthanasia. Admittedly, there have been dark days when the institutional church failed to uphold its covenantal responsibilities, but, thankfully, those days have been short-lived aberrations.
     Whenever believers have successfully defended the helpless, their efforts have adhered to a predictable pattern—a covenantal pattern. The elements in that pattern, like the commitment to life itself, has remained remarkably consistent: an emphasis on the necessity of orthodoxy, the centrality of the church, the indispensability of servanthood, the importance of decisiveness, and the primacy of patience. 

— George Grant, The Third Time Around:

A History of the Pro-Life Movement 

from the First Century to the Present

Looking for something to read?

Some of you may have come across these lists elsewhere already, but I thought I'd pass them on anyway.  It's a wide range of topics, but there you go… that's why we call it a WORLD-view.  Anyway, you might find something to tickly your fancy (if you're pile of "to read" books is not already 6 feet tall).

     Maybe you have some recommendations of your own.  If so, go ahead and jump in on the "comments."

Dr. George Grant’s Favorite Books of 2008

1. Stress of Her Regard (newly restored edition) by Tim Powers
2. Practical and Pious by A.C. Cheyne
3. Truths We Confess by R.C. Sproul
4. Punic Wars and Culture Wars by Ben House
5. A Prodigal God by Tim Keller
6. The King Alfred Saxon Tales Tetrology by Bernard Cornwell
7. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
8. Tales from the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien
9. The Reason for God by Tim Keller
10.What’s So Great About the Doctrines of Grace by Richard Phillips
11. The Living Church by John R.W. Stott

David Bahnsen’s Favorite Books of 2008—with David’s brief commentaries

1. God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, Walter Russell Mead
     It is not just the best book I read in 2008. It is the best book I read by far. It is one of the best books I have ever read, and I hope to read it every year for the rest of my life. No book has ever done a finer job of covering the historicity and integration of religion and economics in the Anglo world. The book is a descriptive and prescriptive masterpiece, evaluating the unique elements in England and later America that gave birth to this empire of freedom we enjoy today.

2. The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark
     Reason, science, and morality have progressed because of Christianity; not despite it.

3. Liar's Poker: Rising through the Wreckage on Wall Street, Michael Lewis
     I have to confess, rarely has a book been so hard to put down once I started reading it (and he wrote this in 1989, believe it or not)

4. Democracy's Good Name: The Rise and Risk of the World's Most Popular Form of Government, Michael Mandelbaum
     The author of the paradigm-shifting Case for Goliath and Ideas the Conquered the World returns to top shelf in this extraordinary work documenting how democracy came to be the prominent form of government on planet earth and what conditions exist today that pose a threat to it.

5. Economic Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell
     Sowell, whom I wish more than anything was the first black President in American history, ruffles the feathers of those whose economic logic can always be reduced to redistributionism. The book is not as insightful as Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, but it is equally cogent and needed in today's atmosphere of economic illiteracy.

6. The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan
     A short but sweet piece from one of the most important foreign policy minds alive today. Kagan's Dangerous Nation convinced me several years ago that I have been fed a load of bull about the founding fathers being isolationists; his newest piece convinced me that China and Russia remain as great of a threat as the Islamic terrorists do.

7. Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity, Michael Lewis (ed.)
     I reviewed this a week or so ago, and remain blown away that the things I read were written as commentary of the 1987 crash, the 1998 meltdown, and the dotcom crash, as it sure felt like I was reading current events.

8. King of the Club, Charlie Gasparino
     The story of the rise and fall of Richard Grasso, the head of the New York Stock Exchange over the last couple of decades, and the ultimate victim in Eliot Spitzer's despicable and self-serving series of crusades from 2002-2006. Grasso, of course, did not resign in the midst of a massive hooker scandal while serving as the moral watchdog on Wall Street (that would be Spitzer). Grasso resigned for taking the paycheck that the compensation committee gave him.

9. Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, Natan Sharansky
     The man whose Case for Democracy finalized my conversion out of paleo-conservatism outdid himself with this delightful repudiation of multi-culturalism

10. Blue Blood and Mutiny: The Fight for the Soul of Morgan Stanley, Patricia Beard
     Not all of you would find it interesting. I read it cover to cover, barely stopping to eat. But I am a Sr VP at the company ... =)

Dr. P. Andrew Sandlin’s Best Books Read in 2008 with Andrew's comments

1. Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, by Peter Gay. Perhaps Gay’s swan song, but a sweeping work revealing the godlessness, egomania and hatred for the past on the part of every leading modernist from Charles Baudelaire to Andy Warhol. Lushly illustrated with color photos. Discloses (albeit unintentionally) why were are in the mess we’re in today.

2. God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Russell Mead. Shows the national roots of the global free market in Holland and traces how the Protestant Faith alone furnishes the rationale and ambiance for burgeoning global wealth.

3. The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World, by David Wells. Potent distillation of his major works of the last 15 years or so. A searing indictment of the man-centered, market-driven, compromising, theologically impoverished evangelicalism, seeker-sensitive and Emergent Movement of our day.

4. Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith, by G. C. Berkouwer. A prophetic work from the early 50s, when the author was less enamored with Barth and Rome. Blisters liberalism and neo-orthodoxy and opposes “the new Christianity in the old church.”

5. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, by Thomas Sowell. Copiously documented application of author’s instant classic A Conflict of Visions: The Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Shows how the prevailing socio-political vision of our time (liberalism) is commandeered by arrogant intellectuals whose lofty, Utopian vision, impervious to empirical falsification, wreaks havoc on every society in which it’s tried.

6. The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia, by Tim Tzouliadis. Remarkable, page-turning account of all the Americans who immigrated to the Soviet Union in the 30s in search of respite from the Great Depression only to suffer and die miserably in Stalin’s Hellish gulags — and, perhaps more searingly, an account of how the U. S government did almost nothing to help them, consistently turning a blind eye and deaf ear. Not a book for the faint-hearted. A blood-boiling book. Thanks to Elizabeth Miller for the recommendation.

7. The New Science of Politics, by Eric Voegelin. An understated précis of the author’s main political thesis — that political tyranny, from Puritanism to Stalinism, derives from Utopian Gnosticism. Thanks to Jason Escalante for the recommendation.

8. The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, by Slavomir Rawicz. Controversial but absorbing autobiographical tale of a Pole incarcerated in Siberia during WWII but who, along with a handful of others, escaped and walked to freedom in northern India. One of the most bracing survival tales of modern times.

9. Tortured for His Faith, by Haralan Popov. This is a serendipitous re-read.

10. Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith. Arguably the best English-speaking thriller in 2008. Follows the trail of a child serial killer in the Soviet Union in the early 50s through the eyes of the detective investigating the gruesome crimes amid a statist machinery committed to the proposition that “murder doesn’t exist in the Soviet Union.”

The inescapable fact of our own createdness

The Bible requires men to believe that God exists apart from and above the world and that he by his plan controls whatever takes place in the world. Everything in the created universe therefore displays the fact that it is controlled by God, that it is what it is by virtue of the place it occupies in the plan of God. The objective evidence for the existence of God and of the comprehensive governance of the world by God is therefore so plain that he who runs may read. Men cannot get away from this evidence. They see it round about them. They see it within them. Their own constitution so clearly evinces the facts of God's creation of them and control over them that there is no man who can possibly escape observing it. If he is self-conscious at all he is also God-conscious. No matter how men may try they cannot hide from themselves the fact of their own createdness. Whether men engage in inductive study with respect to the facts of nature about them or engage in analysis of their own self-consciousness they are always face to face with God their maker.         

— Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith

I love this…but reassuring?

"There is no fate so enviable as to be unjustly 'sacked' in a civilized country."

"Humanist" dehumanization

Many of our surviving grandparents’ generation can remember where they were when they heard the news of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor.  I can remember where I was on November 22, 1963, the day John Kennedy was assassinated (I was at school and it was a “history dress up day,” and one of my classmates was dressed up as President Kennedy).  Even the youngest of you can remember what you were doing on September 11, 2001, when terrorists flew airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York City.  

     But almost no one (who was an adult at the time) remembers where they were or what they were doing when, on January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion across our nation.  People (including believers) didn’t notice, because they weren’t paying attention.

     For many of us, it was not until a few years later, when Francis Schaeffer produced his film series How Should We Then Live?, that we became aware of what had happened.  In his discussion of “sociological law” and “arbitrary absolutes,” Schaeffer used the Roe v. Wade decision as a prime example of the use of law to dehumanize a huge segment of the American population (the pre-born), and provide the legal justification for their wholesale slaughter.  In the ensuing 36 years, nearly 50 million babies have been murdered under the guise of “safe and legal” abortion.  Today 4000 more “legally” dehumanized people will meet their deaths.  And we have a president-elect who promises to tear down any remaining legal “hinderances” that prevent a woman’s “freedom of choice” to kill her child.

     In the flow of “humanist” thinking and action, dehumanization becomes the rule rather than the exception.  It has often been pointed out that the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision (1857) declared blacks non-persons before the law; but now “by an arbitrary absolute brought in on the humanist flow [Roe v. Wade], millions of unborn babies of every color of skin are equally by law declared non-persons” (Schaeffer’s words).  This is the hypocricy of “humanism.”  We are “for humankind,” but we get to decide who will be “human.”

     “Pushing the antithesis” here means letting the Creator-God tell us what true humanness is, and affording all who fit his category the full protection of the law.  Pray God it will be so again soon.

An in-created morality

The revelation of man’s duty toward his Creator is part of the original “covenant of creation.”  Genesis only mentions explicitly the command to be fruitful, multiply, fill, and rule over the earth (Gen. 1:28ff).  But by its very nature, this command comprehends all of human life, and thus implies God’s moral order for human existence.  For man to be man means to be in relationship with God, and therefore under moral obligation to God.  We can’t properly understand human nature without reference to the moral law.  This idea of an in-created morality (as part of human nature itself) stands in direct antithesis to the humanist notion that man must create his own reality and morality — either individualistically (e.g., existentialism) or collectively (e.g., marxism).

Open-mindedness and idiocy

"An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful.  But an open mind about ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or Practical Reason is idiocy.  If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut."  

— C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Getting started

Well, brothers, I've taken the blogging plunge, and this is my first (limited) attempt to learn the ropes, and to provide a way to pass on interesting information from time to time to those who are part of the Bayview Men's Worldview Discussion Groups.  I've used email in the past for this purpose, but I'm told blogging is a better way.  We'll see.  Check in from time to time to see what's new.