Evan Tinklenberg

“Christ's followers are called to bear his cross, to mortify those aspects of their own nature which are inclined to compromise 'upon the earth' (Col. 3:5). They are called to accept exclusion from the created good as the necessary price of a true and unqualified witness to it.”

@David_Mahfood @DZRishmawy We would welcome you, Derek. You can be even more aligned with Bavinck…

It’s weird, I woke up today and I found out that just like several months ago I am still Presbyterian.

Hate-watching another church’s YouTube stream in order to score points is a blatant example of failing to remove the log out of one’s own eye.

We're delighted to welcome @DZRishmawy as our speaker for the Francis Schaeffer Institute Conference this weekend! #theology #culturalapologetics

Robert’s Rules of Order prohibits negative insinuations about others’ motivations, a disposition that has often been called “suspicion.” The moral tradition opposing “suspicion” in this sense extends at least as far back as Augustine. It was lost in the 20th century and “suspicion” was transformed into a quasi-virtue. One way to understand “wokeness” is as institutionalizing suspicion. The only places, I think, where the classical understanding of suspicion still prevails are formal deliberative bodies—Congress, Parliaments, and business meetings governed by Robert’s Rules of Order. The “decorum” that governs those deliberations is a fading vestige of a moral outlook that is, in its essence, deeply Christian. The irony of arch-right thinkers defending the use of suspicion in deliberative bodies is a sign of how untethered from the tradition of Christian moral reasoning “conservatives” have become. It’s tragic, but also mildly amusing. And if you don’t know to what this refers, blessed are you for your ignorance.

I enjoyed discussing the life and intellectual legacy of the great Catholic political philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, with the *Mere Fidelity* podcast. @MereFidelity @DZRishmawy @zugzwanged Listen here for via Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3JkajQ…

@pauljpastor @PepeAMDG FYI (not that you didn’t come up with it independently!): harpercollins.com/products/the-b…

@PepeAMDG I think it is wholly original, at least the term "The Bright Ages," which is good, I think. This concept is a recurring theme in my writing, including in this poem, originally published in Bower Lodge: pauljpastor.substack.com/p/a-poem-nine-…

People talk about “The Dark Ages,” when information was rare, with a shudder, but much more dangerous will be the coming Bright Ages, when endless information is everywhere, exhausting the soul, trampling the senses, and causing the mind to go absolutely snow-blind.

Thread (also, love the OSP reference from Susannah — our church is doing a reading group on Lewis’s sci-fi trilogy and it’s great.)

This is one of the dozen(!) parallel session papers we're looking forward to at LATC 2025: a theology of sanctification under the metaphor of friendship, by Dr. Cambria Kaltwasser. fredfredfred.com/2025/02/friend…

@EricJDirksen @AleahMarsden Hope this is an encouraging time! There are a few Reformed catholic CRCs on the other side of Lake Michigan too — would love to see more churches catch the vision.

Grand Rapids folks, or those who'll be in the area this week: I'll be at Founders Brewing with @AleahMarsden and a few others this Thursday around 7:30 pm to chat a bit about our modest proposal that the future of the CRC be Reformed catholic. Come out and say hi.

Wendell Berry on the particularizing demands of love. Note bene: corruptio optimi pessima.

Thread:

NEWS: Covenant Seminary is pleased to announce that renowned systematic theologian Dr. Fred Sanders (@FredFredSanders) will be the featured speaker for the 2025 David C. Jones Theology Lectures on March 6 and 7. 📰 Read more: covenantseminary.edu/news/2025-jone…

Books not on the list that I am still thinking about: 1. James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity 2. Peter Leithart, Creator 3. Hans Madueme, Defending Sin 4. Kevin VanHoozer, Mere Christian Hermeneutics 5. Richard Beck, Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

6. Gregg Ten Elshof, For Shame 7. Erik Varden, Chastity 8. Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone 9. R . Kendall Soulen, The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity 10. David Edmonds, Parfit 11. Bruce Gordon, Calvin 12. Matthew LaPine, The Logic of the Body

Top 12 books from (roughly) each month of 2024: (Fiction) 1. Tolkien, The Hobbit 2. Andrew Peterson, The Warden and The Wolf King 3. Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger 4. Min Jin Lee, Pachinko 5. David James Duncan, Sun House 6. Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

I put this poster together because I wanted a copy and nobody could sell me one. But I went ahead and made it available at an online store to spread the systematic theological joy!

🧵of thoughts on the whole "the kids are going Orthodox" meme. I have no doubt it is happening at some level and there are a variety of reasons why that others can speak to better. But what I do have is a bunch of questions about prevalence, implications, etc.

@erichoke 5:30am - black coffee 9am - black coffee (Some days: 1pm coffee over ice) Bed by 8:45, asleep by 10 (read in bed folks!)

Caffeine roll call. How much caffeine do you drink in a given day? For me: 5-6am - coffee, black. 9am - coffee, black. Post lunch - doppio, cortado or latte. 3pm - coffee, black (about 50% of the time) 9:30pm - in bed, asleep by 10 You?