The Little Friar

What is the classroom?  It's a place where people come together and start to learn something.  Then, sometimes, they start to love what they are learning, and they are changed by that love.  Real work in the classroom is, therefore, transformative, in the way that love transforms the lover and the beloved. Really the teacher is a kind of midwife to love.  I can't force anybody to love the doctrine of the Trinity.  All I can do is help students to take a look at that doctrine for themselves.  I can challenge some of their prejudices and assumptions.  I can question some of their hasty conclusions.  I can help them to slow down a bit, just long enough to pay attention.  If they give this doctrine their attention, if they really start to look at it, then sometimes their hearts will respond spontaneously.  They might start to love what they see, and then to look even more closely, and to love even more. When this happens -- whe...

Theology. I'm mostly in this business because of the books. And I love them all: The great solid tomes, thicker than American steak; the slim pamphlets, as fine as the wings of a butterfly, and just as enchanting. I spend my days surrounded by books. Teaching theology, for me, feels a bit like being a kid left in charge of the candy store. We all know that I'm going to give up my responsibilities keeping the store at some point to gorge on the candy, and I can't guarantee any dignity to the whole affair when I do. I'll admit that I don't bring much refinement to the act of reading. I'm always a tumble of pages, elbows, slouches, and scribbles. More than a few of my books bear the scars of war with a tea cup. Reading, for me, is enjoyable only when it is reckless and undisciplined. All of that is what makes historical theology so fun for me. Historical theology, you see, is all about reading. Or, rather, readings, of which there are good and ba...

I'm in the midst of editing and reviewing -- for what I hope is the last  time -- my book that introduces philosophy.  Since it's written as an ordinary introduction (for high school and college students), one of my themes in editing has been simple, short sentences.  I've  been trying to use a greater variety of sentence types in my writing, and I have particularly been laboring to achieve good short sentences.  It's harder than it sounds.  I've  also begun to notice that many students could improve their writing dramatically merely by setting their sights on shorter sentences.  Many students have somehow got the assumption that scholarly writing requires a certain tone of voice.  I don’t know where this assumption comes from.  I'm inclined to blame it on the rhetorical posturing of well-meaning but fundamentally inept high school English teachers -- the kind of teacher who promotes "critique" and "decoding" of "texts" instead of e...

Books and articles on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount abound.  Some are worthwhile, but most you can easily ignore.  So when a friend asked me what books I'd assign if I were teaching a course on the Sermon on the Mount, and why those, I immediately thought of these six:  Three must-reads and three recommended.   Must-reads 1.  Eberhard Arnold, Salt and Light:  Living the Sermon on the Mount It's a collection of lectures given in Germany between 1915 and 1935.  Arnold calls decisively for a revolutionary discipleship.  Each chapter speaks to a particular part of the Sermon, and when taken collectively, readers are compelled to action.  For Arnold, the Sermon is rightly not just a new moral code or an ethic but a proclamation that God's Kingdom is here.  Discipleship and community life belong together, because both belong in God's Kingdom of complete love with justice.  2.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer drives...

Teaching theology classes is some of the most exhilarating things I've ever had the joy of doing.  And teaching Trinity and Christology are why  that's true.   In teaching Christology, I always draw together what I call my "12 grammatical rules".   I mention them here today because much of what I've been reading lately -- on preaching -- has had so much to contribute to thinking about Christian speech, that I think these bear repeating for pastors on occasion.  (This post is really Karl Barth's "fault", since I just finished Dogmatics in Outline  again this month.) Each of these rules are offered here in both a negative and a positive affirmation.  The negative addresses temptations of Christian speaking that don't speak of Jesus Christ biblically.  These are temptations of preaching that preachers must avoid.  The positive is the simple message of the Good News we proclaim.  1.   Not to speak of Christ in any way that sidelines his...