Thinking After

Category: Quotes

  • With Friends Like These . . .

    Earlier this year, Bloomsbury T&T Clark published a collection of conversations between the renowned theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas and Brian Brock, who teaches at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.  Brock, who is himself quite an accomplished theological ethicist and is clearly conversant in Hauerwas’s writings, proves to be a worthy interlocutor for Hauerwas.  The book is entitled Beginnings: Interrogating Hauerwas. (more…)

  • A Modest Proposal

    I came across this quote this morning from Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536).  Erasmus, who is sometimes described as “the prince of the humanists,” was a reforming voice within the church in the 16th century, although he never formally broke from Rome.  His critical edition of the Greek New Testament was highly influential for Reformers across the continent.  Unfortunately, the Magisterial Reformers in appealing to the secular authorities for assistance in reforming the church in some ways contributed to the further entrenchment of the competing national loyalties Erasmus is attempting to combat in this quotation: (more…)

  • The Makings of an Evangelist

    “An evangelist is a man who lives in and by and for the Gospel, who lets it master him so completely that he can never be free from it either in waking or sleeping, who lets it saturate his thoughts and feelings and actions, and who therefore confronts men with the Gospel not just when he ascends the pulpit but in all his dealings with them.  It burns like a fire in him and from time to time it flashes out and sets other men on fire. (more…)

  • Marilynne Robinson on Preaching

    “The great importance in Calvinist tradition of preaching makes the theology that gave rise to the practice of it a subject of interest.  As a layperson who has spent a great many hours listening to sermons, I have an other than academic interest in preaching, an interest in the hope I, and so many others, bring into the extraordinary moment when someone attempts to speak in good faith, about something that matters, to people who attempt to listen in good faith. (more…)

  • In the Shadow of the Inauguration

    I came across this excerpt from the writings of Malcolm Muggeridge on Thursday.  It seemed particularly timely in light of the attention given by the media over the past few days to the events in the United States surrounding the Presidential Inauguration.  Muggeridge writes: (more…)

  • Book of the Year

    Cover of Fleming Rutledge's "The Crucifixion"Congratulations to Fleming Rutledge, whose book The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ has been named “Book of the Year” by Christianity Today.  The full article can be read here.

    After publishing several powerful collections of sermons and having faithfully served the cause of the Gospel for many years in pulpits both within her own Episcopal Church and across the ecumenical spectrum, it is wonderful to see her magnum opus receiving this kind of well-deserved recognition. (more…)

  • Bernard of Clairvaux on the Annunciation

    While speaking to a gathering of youth and young adults this past Sunday evening, I took the opportunity to reflect upon the fact that God’s plan to save humanity rested upon the faithfulness of an unknown teenage girl.  This morning I came across a poetic passage in which Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) depicts the whole of creation on tiptoes, listening in on the conversation between Mary and the angel Gabriel, anxiously awaiting Mary’s response. (more…)

  • The Ruler of the World Has Not Changed

    After months and months of campaigning the United States presidential campaign has finally come to an end. Millions both within and beyond the borders of the United States now wait with bated breath for the results to come in. While others are finally able to breathe a sigh of relief at the prospect of no longer having to endure the 24-hour news cycle filled with prickly pundits and surly syndicates attempting to yell over top of one another. Sadly, the presidential election campaign is indirectly responsible for what has become by far my most read blog post, in which I questioned journalist, author and former VeggieTales writer Eric Metaxas’ appropriation of the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (more…)

  • Faithful Presence: Hunter, Fitch and Being Church

    In his significant, ironically entitled work, To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers the following diagnosis of the current cultural moment in which the church finds itself in the United States:

    “The problem for Christians—to restate the broader issue once more—is not that their faith is weak or inadequate.  In contemporary America, Christians have faith in God and, by and large, they believe and hold fast to the central truths of the Christian tradition.  But while they have faith, they have also been formed by the larger post-Christian culture, a culture whose habits of life less and less resemble anything like the vision of human flourishing provided by the life of Christ and witness of scripture.  The problem, in other words, is that Christians have not been formed ‘in all wisdom’ that they might rise to the demands of faithfulness in such a time as ours, ‘bearing fruit in every good work.’”[1. James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 227.] (more…)

  • James Davison Hunter on “the Central Ministry of the Church”

    “Beyond the worship of God and the proclamation of his word, the central ministry of the church is one of formation; of making disciples.  Making disciples, however, is not just one more program—it is not Sunday School, a Wednesday night prayer meeting, or a new book one must read.  Formation is about learning to live the alternative reality of the kingdom of God within the present world order faithfully.  Formation, then, is fundamentally about changing lives. (more…)