The Iliad
Homer, The Iliad Penguin Classics (London: Penguin, 1987), lv + 460pp. ISBN:978-0-14-044444-5. Finally I have taken down this epic of Western culture and literature, after its having sat waiting on my shelf for many years, and read it. What a tragic and …
The Lost Letters of Pergamum
Longenecker, Bruce W., The Lost Letters of Pergamum (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003). 192pp. ISBN: 0-8010-2607-5. For some reason I was drawn again to this little epistolary novel which the subtitle tells us it is a “story from the New Testament world.” …
As a decade begins…
With the twenty teens recently ended, I thought I would post a bit of an update about the blog, fill you in on an exciting new venture I am part of, add some reflections about the start of the twenties, and close …
New Edition of “Election, Barth & the French Connection”
The second edition of Simon Hattrell’s (editor and translator) book on Karl Barth and Pierre Maury is now available from Wipf & Stock. This is an enlarged edition of the book with several additional essays including one by myself entitled “The Light …
Why leadership matters…
Leadership guru Peter Drucker once said that only three things come naturally to all organisations: friction, confusion and under-performance. Everything else requires leadership. It’s worth thinking about. My observation is that those in church circles have an uneasy relationship with leadership. …
From FOMO to hello to here…
Do you, like me, often want to be somewhere else? It’s not that I’m unhappy where I am, it’s just that in a world filled with many options and possibilities – well, why wouldn’t you explore them all? Those younger than me …
Kierkegaard on Christian Scholarship
I found this marvellous quote from Kierkegaard in Richard Bauckham’s monograph on James: Christian scholarship is the human race’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the New Testament, to ensure that one can continue to be a Christian without letting the …
New Book by Carolyn Tan
Congratulations to Carolyn Tan on the publication of her book, The Spirit at the Cross. What was the Holy Spirit doing at the cross of Jesus Christ? Jesus’ death and resurrection are central to God’s reconciliation with humanity. Does the Holy …
When heaven is now…
I’m greatly enjoying Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, All the Light we cannot See – a moving exploration of life set against the Second World War. One chapter is entitled “Heaven” and in it Marie-Laure, blind since aged six, is picnicking with the …
Cultivating a spacious heart…
I don’t know if you can remember a time when your heart was filled with love. Perhaps you thought, “I don’t think I could ever love more than I do now.” It might have been on your wedding day, or on the …