Mike Wittmer

What I think. What I know. What I think I know.

  • voluntarism vs. realism

    I’m prepping for tonight’s class on the nature of God, and one of the points we’ll be discussing is whether God has chosen to be what he is or whether what he is determines his choices. Philosophers call the first viewpoint “voluntarism,” because of its primacy on God’s will; and the second viewpoint realism, because…

  • let my people go (to Florida)

    I spent my last two spring breaks enjoying my Mennonite relatives in Sarasota. I knew there was a story in this “Amish Las Vegas,” and apparently the New York Times agrees.

  • grand traverse

    My family returned from another fun weekend in Traverse City, probably the most beautiful place on earth you’ve never heard of. The area has vineyards, cherry and peach orchards, islands, peninsulas, sand dunes, Petoskey stones, and a vast, unsalted ocean. It’s Tuscany with water. We were saddened to see so many dead buds on the…

  • why would someone be a panentheist?

    This week I was chatting with Brian Mattson, a Th.M. student who is working in the new field of theological aesthetics. He is reading a lot of Hans Urs von Balthasar and David Bentley Hart. You actually don’t read the inscrutable Hart as much as you slip along in his general direction. I’m sure Hart…

  • seller beware

    Here is a draft for an Our Daily Journey devotional which I worked up over the weekend. I’m not real happy with the application (last paragraph). I’d like to also mention the positive aspects of buying (sometimes what we buy and sell is good), but ran out of room (the limit for the piece is…

  • death in evolution

    Last week I heard a professor from MIT say on television, “Three billion years ago, when we were reptiles….” The sentence struck me as very strange, stranger still because neither the host nor the audience batted an eye. Look at that sentence again, and then ponder John Collins’ remark that we must remember “how hard…

  • the evolution of death

    When I was writing my dissertation on H. Richard Niebuhr, I was confused by his use of the terms “creation” and “fall.” At times he seemed to distinguish them as separate events, while elsewhere he seemed to run them together. My confusion was clarified when Langdon Gilkey published a book on Richard’s brother, Reinhold Niebuhr.…

  • Jayber Crow

    I finished my first Wendell Berry novel this week. I picked Jayber Crow, which is a story about a balding bachelor barber who secretly “marries” Mattie, a much younger woman who is already married to a show-off that nobody likes. Jayber vows to stay faithful to Mattie and he does, though he never tells her…

  • deadly denial

    Yesterday Tim Challies excerpted one of the stories from The Last Enemy. It’s a moving story told by my friend, Jeff Halsted, who then was pastor of Indian River Baptist Church, about 30 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge. The story illustrates the importance of facing death with your eyes wide open, trusting yourself completely…

  • wrong on so many levels

    I am pretty sure this isn’t funny, but it caught me in a weak moment. Hint:  check the drapes. For you serious people, this comic is using humor to demonstrate how bad questions may lead to even worse answers.