Category: Blog
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Whitefield & Wesley on Evangelism & Discipleship
George Whitefield and John Wesley, the two titans of the evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century, are not paired often enough. The people who write about them or quote them tend to be strongly attracted to one and averse to the other. As a result, most assessments of the two men have a tendency to…
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Gratitude
Gratitude is free. That’s not because it doesn’t cost anything for us to become more grateful people. It does cost us. Nor because we can idly expect it to be handed around by everyone. We can’t (or shouldn’t). No, it’s free because it’s unnecessary. We can’t demand it of each other. It’s superfluous, extraneous, gracious.…
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Claus von Stauffenberg: German Patriot and Hitler’s Would-Be Assassin
Today, November 15, is the one-hundred and fourth birthday of Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a Catholic aristocrat and officer of the German Wehrmacht who led the anti-Nazi resistance within the German war machine. On the 21st of July, 1944, this man, along with two other German army officers, Henning von Treskow and…
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Appropriating Deep Things @ETS: Four Papers
Next week at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, four scholars will be presenting papers on my 2010 book The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything. By the way, the book is now only $2.99 on Kindle. I am just thrilled that the book has drawn the attention of four…
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Supercat!
Supercat! Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound! Yes, Supercat! Saving kittens as crowds cheer! Super, duper, supercat!
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How to Give an ETS Conference Paper
The Evangelical Theological Society is having its annual meeting next week. As a veteran of a dozen ETS conferences and a bunch of other scholarly gatherings, I offer here a few tips about how to present a paper. I have heard, and I have delivered, some bad presentations, and have learned from trial and error.…
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Experiencing the Trinity (with Wesley)
John Wesley only preached one sermon with the word “Trinity” in the title, but don’t let that fool you: he is a great guide to living out the mystery of evangelical trinitarianism. His approach to the Christian life is saturated with the insight that in everything we do, we are surrounded by the work and…
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Dragon Drawing Comes to Life
Freddy Age Eleven is a prolific artist who draws dragons daily. His studio is littered with them, a hoard of sketches big enough to make Smaug jealous. But for Halloween, he undertook a collaboration with Sanders Consulting, a company that specializes in taking sketches and rendering them in full-scale three-dimensional models. Here is the sketch…
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Intimations of Eternity: George MacDonald, Charles Williams and Dorothy Sayers on the Medieval Imagination
Do I dare Disturb the universe?—T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock…
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Californian Theology @ ETS
The new project called Theological Engagement with California Culture is moving out of the initial planning phase and onto the public stage this November. Since the national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society is in California this year, we are holding our first major presentation in conjunction with ETS in San Francisco. You can read…
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The Sermon on the Mount, According to Wesley
John Wesley is one of the great interpreters of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon plays a central role in Wesley’s own thought. In Wesley’s Standard Sermons, the series of sermons dedicated to expounding Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the longest series of continuous discourses in the whole volume, running from Sermon #21…
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Thomas Traherne: Educating the Whole Soul
Thomas Traherne was born in England in 1637, educated at Oxford and ordained an Anglican priest. During his short life he served as a parish priest and as a private chaplain. He died in 1674 at only 37 years old. During his lifetime he published only one work, the Roman Forgeries but just after his…