This Advent, Nan Thomas will share four Sunday reflections with us on these themes: hope, prepare, watch, and rejoice. Nan is deeply thoughtful about spiritual formation, a topic she pursues as an InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries staff member and as Associate Director of Faculty Development at Union University. In addition, Nan was part of the founding team that imagined the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) and made it a reality. We’re grateful for her ongoing advice and encouragement, and for this Advent series. [Read more…] about Prepare: Second Week of Advent (Scholar’s Compass)
C. S. Lewis
Book Review: The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis
I seldom give much consideration to the title of non-fiction books other than from the perspective of whether it is a book which might be worthy of my time and (perhaps more importantly) of my limited dollars. However, as I read the first couple of essays on the thought of C.S. Lewis in this book by well-known evangelicals, I was struck by the thought that the book was misnamed. The book should be called, “Why we think it is ok for evangelicals to like Lewis.†They go so far as to call Lewis “the patron saint of evangelicals†which is a bit of an unusual moniker for someone whose view of Scripture included such ideas as the Bible contains mythology, the generation of mankind was though the process of evolution and whose eschatology borders on a kind of universalism. Couple that with Lewis’s smoking and drinking, and it seems like an odd fit, though to be fair, the smoking and drinking are not as much of an issue as when I was growing up. So this volume is in some ways, an apologetic for the great apologist, or perhaps it would be better to say that it is an attempt to develop a hermeneutic which can be used to read Lewis though evangelical eyes. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis
Book Review: Reading C.S. Lewis, by Wesley Cort
Reading C.S. Lewis: A Commentary, Wesley Cort. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016 (review based on pre-publication galley).
Summary: This book provides an undogmatic look at C.S. Lewis, considering the influences upon his life and writing, and a commentary on Lewis’s major Christian works.Â
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Book Review: The Fellowship
The Fellowship, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2015.
Summary: This traces the literary lives of the four principle Inklings (Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield, and Williams) the literary club they formed and its impact on literature, faith, and culture.
“In the Fullness of Time†– An Advent Devotional on the theology of time
Advent is a time of both beginning and anticipation. In human history, we have always tracked time from the perspective of the beginnings which define a person, a culture or a nation. We celebrate our birthdays and anniversaries as beginnings: the beginning of life, the beginning of life together. In the Old Testament, Israel orients their calendar year, really their time, around their defining event, the Exodus. In our modern period, we in the United States, though we follow the standard Western calendar, still orient our time around our beginning. July 4th is the oldest of our national holy days, where we still follow John Adams’ advice and celebrate the day with feasting and fireworks. If you were to receive an official proclamation from the President of the United States, it would include two dates: the standard year in Anno Domini and words similar to this, “In the year of our liberty . . .†in which the number of years since 1776 is given. If our nation had been formed before the standardization of the calendar, our new year would begin on July 4th instead of January 1st. [Read more…] about “In the Fullness of Time†– An Advent Devotional on the theology of time