LEGATO...

“Soon after Judge Susan Bolton's decision was announced, a spokesman for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the state will appeal the ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday, asking the appellate court for a swift decision to lift the injunction and allow the blocked provisions to take effect,” reports FoxNews.com. This decision was made despite escalating home invasions, private property damage, drug-related crime, kidnappings, and murder in Arizona and other border states, all traceable to an out-of-control problem and a Federal administration dead set on doing next to nothing about it. Mounting frustration is heard from others who complain of cut fences, escaped animals, stolen farm items, and damaged barns and watering troughs. Excess litter also spreads across the border landscape: water bottles, empty canteens, diapers, plastic bags, and clothing—just to list a few items. One rancher interviewed by Insight Magazine claimed that three of his ...

In A Theory of Justice , John Rawls (1921-2002) argues from a goal-oriented or narrative ethic for an egalitarian form of liberty, in which individuals are guaranteed the greatest liberty compatible with the liberty of others, and also in which inequality is justified to help the poor and disadvantaged, which under the rule of fairness, ought to be established for all. According to David Miller, Rawls’ theory, known as “Justice as Fairness,” argues that the “Parties in the original position are supposed to be  guided not only by a rational desire to promote their interests but also constrained by norms of reasonableness to ensure that they do not propose principles that some will be unable to accept” (David Miller, Principles of Social Justice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999], 57).  There are problems with Rawls' approach. Rawls cannot base his notion in any objective standard, but only in raw subjectivity. Perhaps more importantly, Vacek notes of systems...

Dr. Henry Krabbendam taught for many years at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain Tennessee. He is a scholar and one of the most committed evangelists I know. For years, "Dr. K" has taught that every Christian is responsible for evangelism. One of the passages of Scripture upon which he predicates his idea is John 7:37-39. He ties together this text with Jesus' teaching that he is the "water" of life (John 4:10). The logic is this: if Jesus is the water of life and rivers of living water are to flow from our innermost being after we become Christians, ergo, Christians are to be conduits of the drink of eternal life to others. I have always found this interpretation of Jesus' words in John 7, a stretch. But then to my amazement I found this quote by the eminent theologian J. I. Packer. Jesus, as recorded in John’s Gospel, had already declared what this new ministry would involve. It would not be the world’s first acquaintance with the Spirit of God, wh...

Recently, I had a discussion with some of my Italian study friends over why representatives of the Roman Catholic Church were unhappy not only with representatives of the Reformation but also with some of the men of letters of the Italian Renaissance. The reason has to do with the fact that Renaissance scholars had a way of exposing as fraudulent many of Rome's documents, some of which were said to establish the church's claim to large land holdings. A prime example is as follows... Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457) was the author of the standard Renaissance text on Latin philology. The text was titled: Elegences of the Latin Language. He was primarily active as a secretary to the King of Naples.Although a good Catholic, Valla became a hero to later Protestants. His popularity among Protestants stemmed from his defense of predestination against the advocates of free will and especially from his expose of the Donation of Constantine, a fraudulent document written in the eighth c...