Dear readers,

It has been a wonderful summer of writing, engaging, arguing, linking, and of course, occasionally venting here at the Sword and the Ploughshare, but at last I am off for a much-needed retreat (yes, I know, normally people return from vacations at the end of the summer, rather than embarking on them–guess I’m just eccentric).  Although there are many fascinating things I’ve been hoping to share here, such as finishing my review of Schneider’s Good of Affluence, interacting further with VanDrunen’s Living in God’s Two Kingdoms and Hart’s A Secular Faith, and sharing some of the nuggets from the phenomenal set of papers just delivered at the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, most of these will likely have to wait.  I will be busy cathedraling, you see–returning to pay homage to the glories of Salisbury and Winchester, and discovering for the first time the wonders of Ely, Exeter, Wells, and Gloucester, not to mention the phenomenal fan-vaulting of King’s College Chapel and Bath Abbey.  

In the meantime, I hope that this blog might not be entirely transformed into a ghost town.  Feel free to continue to argue with each other (or me) in the comments section, but I may not be able to moderate much.  And, more significantly, keep an eye out for a series of guest posts by my friend Bradley Belschner, who has been preparing a series of essays on the theological and scientific arguments for young-earth creation.  He would dearly love to make a debate of it, so if he’s able to put these posts up, and you think he’s full of hot air, then have at him.