Entries that relate to C.S. Lewis and his work.
Let’s cut to the chase: In this collection of hundreds of mostly short, fairly pithy sayings, there is no doubt about the best one. It’s number 43 in book XIV: “Yuan Jang sat waiting with his legs spread wide. The Master said, ‘To be neither modest nor deferential when young, to have passed on nothing … [Read more…]
Moses is the central figure — besides God, of course — in the the four books of the Pentateuch following Genesis. And those four books have two strands: the historical narrative of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt and to the Promised Land, and the laws given to Moses by God during that time … [Read more…]
I really liked this passage from Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s article, “Letter to an Aspiring Theologian: How To Speak of God Truly,” in the August/September 2018 issue of First Things: … [T]he best way to stay focused on the subject matter of theology is to stay focused on Scripture. John Calvin viewed his Institutes as help … [Read more…]
This book is short (132 pages plus notes); the author says that it is drawn from a longer, earlier work by him, Money, Possessions, and Eternity. It is also straightforward and unabashed in its message: While faith is what gets us into Heaven, it’s works that determine how and to what extent we will be … [Read more…]
I got this book after reading a glowing recommendation for it by Eric Metaxas, who has written a foreword for it in a new edition just published (I wasn’t able to get that version on interlibrary loan, alas). Metaxas compares the book to C.S. Lewis’s work, and author Thomas Howard himself most graciously includes Lewis … [Read more…]
Walker Percy is one of my favorite authors, and this book was given to me by Professor Michael DeBow, one of my favorite people, who picked it up in St. Francisville, Louisiana, at the annual Walker Percy Weekend there. Percy is a Southern Catholic existentialist — an interesting combination. This book devotes a chapter each … [Read more…]
This is a book of prayers, and it is fitting that it should be literally in center of the Bible and is one of its longest books (with its longest (119) as well as its shortest (117) “chapter”), since what is more important to a believer than prayer, and what can be more valuable to … [Read more…]
Overview: Here’s a bare-bones outline of the book: It begins with a quick sketch of Job and his idyllic life as a good and very blessed man, with a big happy family and great wealth. In the next scene, God is meeting with his angels, and God brings up to Satan (!) the subject of … [Read more…]
Three of the Wisdom books — Ecclesiastes, Job, and Psalms — share a common theme: It’s permissible, even expected, that we should kvetch to God about the hardships we face, but this complaining and questioning should be accompanied by faith and trust and a recognition that God knows what He is doing, so that the … [Read more…]
Happy Easter! He is risen! Since I’m writing something about every other book of the New Testament, it would be odd to skip the Gospels. On the other hand, one always worries that it is presumptuous at best to try to boil down God’s word, and that is especially so with the Gospels. What’s more, … [Read more…]