I think the Bible is pretty clear that faith and works are inseparable, though I’m enough a creature of the Reformation to hold that good works do not earn salvation. Martin Luther (following St. Paul) believed that good works would issue spontaneously out of the life of the believer, but they were not the catalyst for salvation.

And it must be an arid spirituality indeed that makes protestations of faith, but those commitments find scant expression in how one lives from day to day.

I've come to believe that doubt is not the antithesis of faith. It is, rather, an essential component of faith, because if matters of religion or belief were all verifiable by rational means, what's the role of faith? My favorite passage in the New Testament is the statement from the father of a young boy. "I believe," he tells Jesus. "Help my unbelief."

All of this renders chimerical the attempts to "vindicate" Christianity by rational or empirical means -- so-called "scientific creationism," for instance, or the "intelligent design" movement. I decided long ago that I would not allow the canons of Enlightenment Rationalism be the final arbiter of truth. I elect to live in an enchanted universe where forces are at play beyond my ability to comprehend, much less explain, them.

I wouldn't live anywhere else.

At the core of the problem with our Iraq policy is that this putatively "Christian" president utterly ignored centuries of thought and writings in the Christian tradition about what does or does not constitute a "just war."

Is the use of force taken as the last resort? Is it a defensive war? Is there a reasonable chance of success? Is the amount of force roughly proportional to the provocation? Finally, and most important, have provisions been made, as much as possible, to shield civilians from being collateral damage?

Despite the labored efforts of such neoconservative theorists as Jean Bethke Elshtain and George Weigel, the invasion of Iraq meets none of these criteria. (Elshtain, for example, totally ignores such crucial bits of evidence as the Downing Street memorandum in constructing her justification for war in Iraq.)

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