Featured Essay / Literature
Young, Frances M. Construing the Cross: Type, Sign, Symbol, Word, Action. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2015. Frances M. Young’s Construing the Cross is no mere exercise by a young scholar with an idea, research leave and a bibliography. Rather, this is the product of a mature and measured lifetime of…
Essay / Literature
Today, August 15, marks the 1,233rd anniversary of the Battle of Roncesvalles, a pitch battle fought by a contingent of Charlemagne’s army led by Roland, the prefect of the Breton March, against a Basque attack on the Roncesvalles pass while Roland’s men were on the
Essay / Literature
Richard Hays (from his 2001 intro to the 2nd ed. of Faith of Jesus Christ) gives some great advice on how to read Paul: “Paul, the missionary preacher, is at least as much a poet as he is a theologian.” And Hays doesn’t just mean
Essay / Literature
One of the most frustrating things about being a professor in a Great Books program is that there are so many books that can, and indeed should, be in any possible curriculum, but given the constraints related to time and space that we have to
Essay / Education
Andrew Faris over at Someone Tell Me The Story recently posted a short interview he did with me on the subject of writing. Along the way I ranted about the current state of theological writing, recommended a few resources, and said ridiculous things like “ignore
Essay / Education
I’ve just finished reading the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Our seniors read it in the Torrey Honors Institute as part of a semester of books on America. Douglass’ is one of hundreds of slave narratives, narratives which played a
Essay / Literature
Okay, war is not really swell. But today (October 25) is the anniversary of two battles that live on in our memory because of the martial virtues conspicuously displayed in them. These battles conjured poetry from two of the greatest poets in the history of
Essay / Literature
What’s the most popular and influential book in the history of California? An 1884 romance called Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson. It’s a longish book that follows the misfortunes of a beautiful young orphan who is half Scottish and half native American. She is raised
Essay / Literature
“This is intended to be a literal translation,” says Allan Bloom in the preface to his 1968 edition of Plato’s Republic. And it is, famously, or infamously, literal. Bloom puts his head down and digs out as word-for-word a translation as he can. What drove
Essay / Literature
Reading the story of Israel’s first king this week, it occurred to me that this story in 1 Samuel has all the makings of a classic tragedy: his early promise, his fatal flaws, his downfall, the lament sung over him by David his successor. It’s
Essay / Education
Not long ago my whole family listened to a remarkable audio book. It’s a reading of Evelyn Sibley Lampman’s 1960 The City Under the Back Steps. It’s a great adventure story about two kids who get shrunk to bug size, and spend a few days
Essay / Literature
Three authors who knew a lot more when they were older, but were glad they had written their books when they were younger: John Wesley: “Nay, I know not that I can write a better on The Circumcision of the Heart than I did five and
Essay / Literature
I just finished a very fast read-through (with permission to skip some sections) of Louis Menand’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 book The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. It’s a 500-page book about one school of American philosophy. I picked it up used and