Hans Frei’s Central Idea

Thanks to Patrick Schreiner for pointing to this essay, in which William C. Placher describes Hans Frei’s central idea: Frei certainly never thought of himself as a “great theologian, ” but he did have a central passion, a central idea. That idea emerged through long study, in the 1950s and ’60s, of l8th- and 19th-century …

Halton on the Human Element of History

Reflecting on a post entitled “The Spiritual Ground of History,” Charles Halton describes a poignant moment in his own research: . . . as I was going through the cuneiform tablet collection that belongs to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. I was bogged down in trying to read from broken tablets and …

J. K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Address: Failure and Imagination

In 2008 Rowling gave a stirring address at the Harvard commencement on the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination. Some highlights: by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, …

R. C. Sproul and T. Lively Fluharty, The Barber Who Wanted to Pray

If you’re needing a little encouragement to do family devotions, or if you’re looking to spur someone in that direction, you’ll want to get your hands on The Barber Who Wanted to Pray by R. C. Sproul and T. Lively Fluharty. This book is a great encouragement to be reading the Bible, singing the Bible, …

George W. Bush Sounds Like Lincoln on Prayer

The conclusion of this must read article: I visited President Bush in the Oval Office one more time. I was thinking about doing a book about how Americans pray, and I had remembered that way back in Midland, he had advised me to read the Bible cover-to-cover, something I had done since then. He agreed …

Perseus Classics Free for Logos

The Perseus Collections will be released from Logos on September 30, 2011. If you pre-order them, you get them free. You read that right – free if you pre-order. Tony Reinke writes: The collection is a library in itself of over 1,100 ancient Greek and Latin titles and includes many corresponding English translations and helpful …

Review of Paul Barnett’s “Paul: Missionary of Jesus”

Paul: Missionary of Jesus. After Jesus, vol. 2. By Paul Barnett. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008, xvi + 240 pp. $18.00 paper. Published in The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15.1 (2011), 112–13. In this book Paul Barnett asks whether the mission and message of Paul the Apostle was the mission and message of Jesus of …

Be on Guard: The Point of Mark 13, with some thoughts on ‘this generation’

Mark 13 is not in the Bible to provoke debates about when all things will be consummated – what Jesus meant by “this generation.” Mark 13 is in the Bible to prepare disciples of Jesus against deception, fear, sleepy inattention, persecution, and uncertainty. In Mark 11 Jesus entered Jerusalem on a colt to cries of …

Whittaker Chambers on C. S. Lewis

As I read Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, at several points the story drove me to look things up online, where I found a page that links to many of Chambers’ other writings. Somewhere I read Solzhenitsyn say that his writing resulted from his having been thrown headlong into hell and attempting to describe the experience. Chambers’ …

Whittaker Chambers on James Joyce

In the conclusion of his review of Finnegan’s Wake, Whittaker Chambers wrote this telling description of James Joyce, “Nono. In appearance Joyce is slight, frail but impressive. He stands five feet ten or eleven, but looks as if a strong wind might blow him down. His face is thin and fine, its profile especially delicate. …

Have You Read “Unbroken”?

What a book! Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken is a “true tall tale” (AP) powerfully told. At 19 in 1936, Louie Zamperini “was the youngest distance runner ever to make the [U. S. Olympic] team” (27). The 1940 Olympics were cancelled because WWII had begun (44). Zamperini was drafted and became a bombardier (45). May 27, 1943, …

Ghandi Was a Good Person?

Somebody knows this? For certain? See this article, which begins like this: “Joseph Lelyveld has written a ­generally admiring book about ­Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet ‘Great Soul’ also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a …