James Wood is always worth reading. His latest review in The New Republic examines the first novel of Monica Ali, entitled Brick Lane . It tells the story of Nazneen, an eighteen-year-old Bangladeshi woman who is taken from her home to an arranged marriage to a much older man in London. The novel . . . . Continue Reading »
The exhortation from September 7, 2003: A Pharisee and a publican went to the doctor, and both learned that they needed surgery. The publican agreed to the surgery, and, after a long and painful recovery, regained his health. The Pharisee also agreed to the surgery, but at the last moment began to . . . . Continue Reading »
In Luke 5, the friends of the paralytic cannot get him to Jesus, and so they lower him through the roof. As many commentators have pointed out, this situation is a sign of the paralytic’s exclusion from community. By the end of the story, though, others join with him in “glorifying . . . . Continue Reading »
Sermon outline for September 7 (though I’m reconsidering my take on Jesus’ “parable” about the wineskins). Jesus and the Pharisees, Luke 5:1-6:11 INTRODUCTION Anointed and baptized, Jesus has begun His mission of proclaiming and enacting the year of release, the great . . . . Continue Reading »
For several years, I have been assigning W. H. Auden’s poem “The Shield of Achilles” to my literature students, and they all have to write a paper on it. The poem is very rich, and I continue to learn new things. One student this year, for example, pointed out that the reader is . . . . Continue Reading »
Years ago, I enjoyed Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker , a superbly written account of Lewis’s years on Wall Street. His latest, Moneyball , is even better. Lewis tells the story of the Oakland A’s, and particularly of their GM Billy Beane, and how he revolutionized the way . . . . Continue Reading »
A truly amazing article by Khaled Anatolios of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology (Cambridge, Mass) in the most recent issue of Pro Ecclesia . Anatolios is exploring the perennial question of the Spirit, and defends the traditional characterizations of the Spirit as “mutual love” and . . . . Continue Reading »
Some time ago, John Robbins put my name in a list of theologians influenced by Daniel Fuller and John Piper. (I was in the good company of John Frame, Dick Gaffin, and others, so I was actually honored.) The funny thing was, that I had read almost nothing of either Fuller or Piper. So I could live . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s intriguing that some of our best historians these days are evangelicals. George Marsden’s biography of Jonathan Edwards is just one more in a string of widely-reviewed and well-reviewed works from Marsden. Mark Noll has made the big time. And Alan Guelzo’s biography of . . . . Continue Reading »
Eugene Genovese has a typically pungent and pugnacious review of Mark Noll’s America’s God in the current issue of The New Republic . He commends Noll’s scholarship, research, erudition, and calls him one of the best of contemporary American historians. He spends most of the . . . . Continue Reading »
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