Being perspective weekend, you will hear much about New College Franklin, about the excellence of our program and community. For this reason, I want to talk about education from a different perspective. I want to conclude some recent meditations on learning by exploring the experience of the educator. Oddly enough, I am going to … Continue reading The Poetics of Faith and Learning, Part 5 (fin)
To be a disciple is fundamentally to be a learner. But while a geometry student submits his mind to a proof or theorem, a learner of Christ is called to submit his whole being to God. And while the student may come to internalize a truth, the disciple can come to embody God’s presence. This is because both Learning and discipleship happen through a process of poetic formation. In … Continue reading The Poetics of Faith and Learning, Part 4
Stories are so much more than spoonfuls of sugar which help the moral medicine go down. Because all of God’s activity has the structure of narrative, stories are the habitat in which ethical realities exist. As water is to fish, so is narrative to ethics. For this reason, stories play an integral role in our moral education, and … Continue reading Well Wrought Stories and Moral Judgment
When the Hairy Hooligans are ambushed aboard their ship, their captors announce a plan to execute Stoick, the head of the viking tribe as well as his heir. It is at this moment in Cressida Cowell’s How to be a Pirate (from her How to Train a Dragon Series) that Hiccup steps forth in heroic loyalty to his father. … Continue reading On the Power of Asking Questions
Human reproduction, when considered in its social context, is expressive of beauty and purpose. Though human history and the human family is marred by division, sorrow, and every form of violence, this beauty and purpose yet remains, albeit obscured and deeply marred. Further, in God’s grace, this beauty and purpose is redeemed and directed unto a new and greater perfection. Not every … Continue reading Platted and Woven: On Human Sexuality
When rumors of the resurrection began to be noised about, what was it like for her who had been his mother, who had nursed him and reared him and known him as a child? Did those rumors awaken in her memories of more than thirty years past, from a time when the Angel Gabriel had appeared … Continue reading Rumors of the Resurrection
I have been upon rough seas and swallowed whole by a great fish. Only, the belching forth was my own work. A bit of a stomach bug is going about, and I received a share in it for my birthday today. The story of the cross may refer to Christ’s passion or to the totality of the Gospel. Talk about one … Continue reading The Sign of Jonah, Part II: Typology
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love Endures forever… …to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt his love endures forever Psalm 136 vs.1 & 10 (NIV) 3. … Continue reading On Our Preference for the First Born: The Anagogical
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love Endures forever… …to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt his love endures forever Psalm 136 vs.1 & 10 (NIV) 3. … Continue reading On Our Preference for the First Born: The Moral
“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” 2nd Corinthians 7:10 Saul fails to carry out the Lord’s command, and so Samuel communicates God’s decision to remove him from the throne. Though he affects repentance, and indeed does regret his loss, we can see that he is … Continue reading Not to Presume upon Grace: Beware the Way of the Double-minded
Same & Other 