We are changing seasons here in Chicago — it suddenly ran up to 87 degrees the other day. High schools are winding down, colleges have sent the residents home, gardens are beginning to bloom, and we’ve got new birds flitting around our neighborhood. I would like also to suggest that this a time of prayer change — a time when the change of seasons lends us a little more easily to adjusting our habits to spend more time in prayer.... Read more
This week the following verses (6:4-5), from the beginning of the week, struck me: |inline Read more
In one brief prohibition: If you have written a book, don’t create a blog to market your book. Now an explanation: |inline Read more
My writer from St. Louis asked three questions: 1. Why the move from seminary to undergrad? 2. What do you like most about undergrad teaching? 3. What type of person would you say would make the best undergrad prof? Yesterday we dipped into the first one — and today I’d like to focus on the 3rd since the 2d, as it turns out, got answered some yesterday. |inline Read more
The man, with his love back with him, extols her physical beauty once again. |inline Read more
I’ve been asked this question so many times I’ve stopped estimating. Recently a seminary student from St. Louis wrote to me with these three questions, and I said I’d finally answer these questions on the blog: |inline Read more
Some people study the Gospels to focus on the author’s shaping of the message — so they talk about how Matthew or Mark or Luke or John “tell the story of Jesus.” For over a century scholars have contended that behind each of the storied presentations in the Gospels was a real Jewish messiah. About two years ago, my PhD mentor, James D.G. Dunn, and I co-edited a book that can guide you to some of the best scholarship on... Read more
The following lines are a puzzle for interpreters. Who is saying these words? |inline Read more
You might see in Mark Noll’s defining characteristics of 18th Century Pietism — Spener, Francke, Zinzendorf — a glimmer of the emerging movement. (Mark Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism.) For those of you know care about historical movements like this, tell me what you think. How might the emerging movement be seen as a 21st Century form of pietism? |inline Read more
Hi Scot It’s the graduation season again and there are a couple of students in our small church that are finishing high school. Along with the usual card and money I always like to give a book (many times of which I am certain has not been read. . . .yet!). As I was considering which books would be appropriate for these particular students I found myself wondering what you would recommend. Perhaps this could be an interesting question on... Read more
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