This past year I’ve had the great privilege of working with Stanley Hauerwas on his forthcoming book Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections (Cascade Books). I served as something of a curator and editor of Hauerwas’s essays, addresses, and sermons, as well as contributing a couple of essays and sermons of my own to the volume. The essays, I believe, feature some of best writing, so I am delighted that they have found a home in such a rich volume alongside of Hauerwas’s enduringly relevant and provocative investigations and sermons. In addition to the gracious invitation to participate in the project, Stanley has generously granted me permission to share some of my favourite quotes from the book in the days leading up to its publication. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will draw attention to some of the turns-of-phrase, sentences and short passages that, for one reason or another, captured my imagination. Continue reading A New Series on “Minding the Web”
Category Archives: Quotes
Tertullian on Patience
“Patience outfits faith, guides peace, assists love, equips humility, waits for penitence, seals confession, keeps the flesh in check, preserves the spirit, bridles the tongue, restrains the hands, tramples temptation underfoot, removes what causes us to stumble, brings martyrdom to perfection; Continue reading Tertullian on Patience
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought
I’m in the midst of reviewing some resources for a course I’m going to be offering on the Church Fathers in the winter and came across this quote from the introduction to Robert Wilken’s wonderful book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought that resonates with Robyn’s and Don’s comments on my previous post: Continue reading The Spirit of Early Christian Thought
The Virtue of Baseball
The most recent book from Stanley Hauerwas, The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson, consists of letters that the theologian annually sent to his godson, Laurie Wells, over a fifteen year period marking the anniversary of Wells’s baptism. Each of the letters addresses a virtue that is important for the Christian life. As a result, the book can be read as an engaging entry point into and accessible distillation of Hauerwas’s forty plus years of prodigious scholarship and writing. The book, which seems ideally situated to become a classic, also contains an eloquent introduction by one of Hauerwas’s most insightful interpreters, who also happens to be the father of the recipient of the letters, the pastor-theologian Sam Wells. One of my favourite passages involves a discussion of the training in patience that is baseball. Continue reading The Virtue of Baseball
From “Following” to “Getting Something From”
A quote I encountered earlier today while reading a sermon from Eugene Peterson on the story of the rich young ruler from the Gospel of Mark (10:17-22) seems to rhyme in its own way with my previous post on Salvation by Allegiance Alone. Continue reading From “Following” to “Getting Something From”
Salvation By Allegiance Alone
In the days ahead, I’m hoping to post a series of reflections on the chapters of Matthew W. Bates’s book Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King. When I first heard of Bates’s book about a year ago, I knew that it was a title I would have to read. His main thesis seems to overlap in some significant ways with some of my own thinking emerging from my reflection upon the themes of discipleship, apocalyptic theology, and the pistis Iesou Christou (faith in/faithfulness of Jesus Christ) debate, alongside of my dissertation work on the theologies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas. Furthermore, the title of the book resonates in some interesting ways with a sermon I preached that will be appearing in a forthcoming book. In that sermon, based on Romans 1:1-7, I suggest that the Gospel can be understood as “the Neverending Story of King Jesus.” Continue reading Salvation By Allegiance Alone