Certain philosophers shake up the world with a new frame of reference, a new central question, a new way to proceed in doing philosophy.  In the twentieth century Martin Heidegger…

Series Index Recently an intrepid group of students and faculty at Emmanuel College began a school-year-long adventure in philosophy, planning together to read Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations together, a bit at a time,…

Why Can’t Grad School Be Purgatorial? No, good reader, that would be too easy.  Graduate school itself wasn’t much at all like Purgatory.  After all, the conditions for my leaving…

David Grubbs holds forth with Nathan Gilmour and Michial Farmer about allegory, both as a mode of reading and as a literary genre. The debate hinges on what terms mean…

Gene Simmons: “Rock Is Finally Dead” The Parable of the Madman from The Gay Science might seem a strange partner for a Gene Simmons interview, but the latter made me think of…

I’m teaching the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius for the fifth time this semester, and today I remember that this book still stands as a magister of thought, provided I’m willing still…

I sometimes wonder whether I or Emmanuel College‘s New Testament professors teach more lines of Greek writing in a given semester, but in semesters like this one, I have to think I’ve…

I’ve never been fully fluent in the sociological terminology that usually accompanies these sorts of discussions, and I studiously avoid Internet neologisms that sometimes arise out of the same (though…

I see the formulation all the time,  but I rarely give it much thought. “Teaching isn’t a science.  It’s an art.” “Teaching isn’t a science.  It’s a craft.” “Teaching isn’t…

If we write, our best friends might just be those who write against us.  Luther and Erasmus, both formidable thinkers, derive at least part of their well-earned place in the Church’s…

Students had been saying it for years, but it wasn’t until this semester that I started wondering what it really means when students say I’m not a “real” English professor.  Most…

Another teaching semester is about to ramp up, and as is often the case, I have some Platonic dialogues lined up to teach.  I’ve taught at least one dialogue in …

If the LORD had led Israel out of Egypt, Dayenu.  If the LORD had wrought justice upon the Egyptians, Dayenu.  If the LORD had wrought justice on their gods, Dayenu. …

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart D. Ehrman 371 pp. HarperOne. $27.99 I doubt that he would ever admit it (he goes…

The Bible stands before the 21st-century Christian as the most familiar of books and the most alien of books.  Partisans of nearly any political persuasion will claim inspiration from the…