When I posted about the writer’s battle with “the demon of futility” I mentioned the frustration that can come from identifying yourself as a writer. People ask what you’ve written. They’ve never heard of it. They’ve never heard of you. In a way this is perfectly natural: A book can be a success by any reasonable […]
Making Friends in Seminary (Letters to a Young Pastor)
Dear ______: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on my recent letter about making friends with John Calvin. I think you drew some conclusions that I wasn’t intending. Let me take a step back. As a person in ministry, you need a lot of different kinds of friends — and seminary is a great place to […]
On ‘the art of theological reflection’
When trying to make good use of writings that stand at a great distance from us–whether because they come from long ago or from across the boundaries of cultures, we need some guidelines, some sense of how we might go about it. We pick up a patristic theologian, say John Chrysostom, and find his style […]
What to do with a giant?
The giants should be easy to spot. I mean, hey, they are big. Maybe you heard the name of one in “Western Civilization” or “Introduction to Church History.” Their name got mentioned because they wrote something that mattered. Their words stood the test of time. Or they did something that mattered so much then that […]