In his introduction to Beowulf, the scholar Friedrich Klaeber explains the great Geatish warrior’s resemblances to Christ by concluding that “the narrative derived a superior dignity from suggesting the most exalted hero-life known to Christians” (li). Readers of another Beowulf scholar, J.R.R. Tolkien, have also noted echoes of that “most exalted hero-life” in his epic…
David Grubbs talks with Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour about the deuterocanonical book “The Wisdom of Solomon.”
Download or Stream this Episode To the one who writes “Jesus is the answer” on the youth-room poster or on the bathroom stall, I reply, “Jesus is the question.” And of course, true to Biblical phrase-building, Jesus is not mere question but question of questions, demanding from the thinking faithful careful inquiry into history, theology,…
In the early second century, Pliny, the governor of the Roman province of Pontus and Bithynia, wrote a letter to his emperor, Trajan, about Christians who “were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a deity.” But when did early Christians begin to believe…
Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality By Michael Spencer 229 pp. Cascade Books. $13.99 Two influences obviously shaped my experience of reading this book: for one, as I wrote in my post “On the Death of Facebook Friends” in April, I read this book as the posthumous work of an Internet personality…