The Big Story that Defines Historiography
The following quotes come from Ken Myers' recent Mars Hill Audio Journal interview of Christopher Shannon, author of The Past as Pligrimage. I believe they are quotations from Shannon's book, but Myers was a little ambiguous and I was unable to confirm this (Google Books and Amazon had no previews, and I've got a limited book budget!): Historians tell stories about the past, and American historians tend to tell a monolithic American story. The conventional story they tell is one of the...
Come to My Class
I live my life in the grip of a few powerful, simple, biblical ideas. One of them is CFR: Creation, Fall, Redemption. CREATION One of my literary heroes said, "God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them." But God didn't just create us; he lovingly created a world for us to fill, subdue, and have dominion over. Creation begins the story of the Bible and forms the basis for a Christian worldview. It explains why there is...
Review: C. S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity”: A Biography
C. S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity": A Biography by George M. Marsden My rating: 4 of 5 stars Classic Marsden. He did his homework and dug up some interesting anecdotes, offering a strong narrative, a clear outline and analysis, and some insightful points along the way. He did some "reception history" by looking at ways that people have reacted to Lewis' book, including his famous "trilemma" (Jesus is liar, lunatic, or Lord). One insight from the book that struck me: Lewis didn't use reason to...
Al Mohler Talks to Stanley Fish
I love Stanley Fish, and I was thrilled to find this morning in my podcast feed that he has showed up again on Al Mohler's "Thinking in Public." I was even more thrilled as I listened on the bus—at single speed, so I didn't miss a thing, an honor I rarely show my podcasters—that Mohler asks him some of the questions we all want to ask. Mohler does a great job bringing out of Fish an introduction to his thought and his critique of liberalism. He also leads Fish to distinguish himself from the...
Insights from Cool People that Know Stuff About Things
I like working with cool people who know stuff about things. I was talking about Bible typography with one such person at my office recently, an editor at Lexham Press, and he made a little comment that belongs on my Internet weblog: It’s wrong to say that if you can’t articulate something, not only can you not understand it but you haven’t really experienced it. What he meant, in context, was that there is a real difference between the experience you have with the Bible when it looks like...