tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76894509591301485392024-03-11T03:21:48.277+00:00A Common Place BlogQuotations from what I've been readingEd Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comBlogger4243125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-75217450388836328112024-02-11T14:48:00.006+00:002024-02-11T14:48:50.656+00:00GOD'S GOODNESS MUST RUB OFF ON US 'You cannot have [a] relationship with a good God without becoming a better man.'<br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Michael Green,<i> 2 Peter and Jude</i>, p.119. </span>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-50406786650592240782024-02-01T09:23:00.004+00:002024-02-01T09:23:41.690+00:00MIRACLES & BELIEF <div style="text-align: justify;">'Miracles don't make people believe!...It's the belief that is the miracle.'</div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Penelope Fitzgerald, <i>The Blue Flower</i>, p.84.</div></span>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-60060356720332419792024-01-12T09:17:00.003+00:002024-01-12T09:17:25.794+00:00THE HOLY SPIRIT'S SPECIAL WORK <div style="text-align: justify;">'To persuade a poor, sinful soul that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him and only has thoughts of kindness towards him is an expressible mercy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is the special work of the Holy Spirit and by this special work we have communion with the Father in his love, which is poured into our hearts.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">John Owen, <i>Communion with God</i>, p.210. </span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-81045921361442821102024-01-07T18:15:00.003+00:002024-01-07T18:15:45.410+00:00THE WIDE EMBRACE OF CHRISTIANITY <div style="text-align: justify;">'Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">CS Lewis in 'Is Theology Poetry?', <i>Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church,</i> p.21.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-25822342032877478782024-01-06T09:57:00.006+00:002024-01-06T09:58:25.910+00:00THE REALISM OF CHRISTIANITY<div style="text-align: justify;">'Christianity does not merely offer a new way of beholding our world, but an enhanced capacity to live within that world and cope with its uncertainty and complexity, as well as our own frailty and failings. It enables us to confront glib and shallow accounts of our situation, such as the superficial rationalism of the Enlightenment or the facile optimism of an ideology of 'positive thinking', which seeks to exorcise any recognition of the darker and more disturbing aspects of human nature or creation. Reality is complex and ambivalent; wisdom demands that we recognise this, rather than crudely forcing it to be uniformly simple and positive. Intellectual violence is unable to suppress this darker truth about our world, which Christianity has afformed and confronted, rather than implausibly denied.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Alister McGrath, <i>Through a Glass Darkly</i>, p.207.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-22844967520970322082024-01-06T09:45:00.006+00:002024-01-06T09:45:43.381+00:00THE SELF-INTEREST IN ATHEISM<div style="text-align: justify;">'It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Thomas Nagel in Alister E McGrath, <i>Through a Glass Darkly</i>, p.173.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-28875378016449541772024-01-06T09:40:00.006+00:002024-01-06T09:40:42.647+00:00WE ARE MEANING SEEKING CREATURES<div style="text-align: justify;">'We cannot simply eat, sleep, hunt and reproduce - we are meaning seeking creatures. The western world has done away with religion but not with religious impulses; we seem to need some higher purpose, some point to our lives - money and leisure, social progress, are not not enough.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Jeanette Winterson in Alister E McGrath, <i>Through a Glass Darkly, </i>p.165.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-34871976168548708702024-01-06T09:35:00.001+00:002024-01-06T09:35:10.166+00:00THE NEWNESS OF FACTS<div style="text-align: justify;">'...facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth century invention.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Alasdair MacIntyre in Alister E McGrath, T<i>hrough a Glass Darkly: Journeys through Science, Faith & Doubt,</i> p.158.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-90176876860568615982023-12-31T00:30:00.002+00:002023-12-31T11:14:26.417+00:00My 2023 Reading <p> Those in <b>bold</b> are this year's top ten: </p><p><b>January</b></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Jocelyn Brooke, <i>The Orchid Trilogy</i></li><li>Ocean Yuong, <i>On Earth We're Briefly Beautiful</i></li><li>Katherine May, <i>The Electricity of Every Living Thing</i></li><li>Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera, <i>The Awakening of Miss Prim </i></li><li>Natalia Ginzburg, <i>Happiness, as Such </i></li><li>Valentine Low, <i>Courtiers: The hidden power behind the crown </i></li><li>Mary Renault, <i>The Last of the Wine </i></li><li>Tom Crewe, <i>The New Life </i></li></ol><div><b>February</b></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Sean Hewitt, <i>All Down Darkness Wide</i></li><li><b>Tim Chester, <i>Truth We Can Touch: How Baptism and Communion Shape Our Lives </i></b></li><li>John Moore, <i>The Water Under the Earth</i></li><li>James Salter, <i>Last Night: Stories</i></li><li>DA Carson (Ed.), <i>Worship by the Book</i></li></ol><div><b>March </b></div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Wendell Berry, <i>How It Went: Thirteen more stories of the Port William Membership </i></b></li><li>Christine Barnabas, <i>Consecrated Celibacy: A Fresh Look at an Ancient Calling </i></li><li><b>Mary Renault, <i>The King Must Die </i></b></li><li>Patrick Ness, <i>Different for Boys </i></li><li>Frederick Buechner, <i>Speak What We Feel (Not What We Ought to Say): Four Who Wrote in Blood</i></li><li>Mary Renault, <i>The Bull from the Sea</i></li><li>Gregg A Ten Elshof,<i> I Told Me So: self-deception and the Christian life</i></li></ol><div><b>April </b></div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>John Mark Comer, <i>Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace </i></li><li>Barbara Pym, <i>The Sweet Dove Died </i></li></ol><div><b>May </b></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Jon Meacham, <i>Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power</i></li><li>Arnold Bennett, <i>Clayhanger </i></li><li>John Carey, <i>A Little History of Poetry </i></li><li>Collin Hansen, <i>Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation </i></li><li><b>Betty Smith, <i>A Tree Grows in Brooklyn </i></b></li><li>Zena Hitz, <i>Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life</i></li><li>Iain Pears, <i>An Instance of the Fingerpost </i></li><li>David Gibson, <i>Radically Whole: Gospel healing for the divided heart </i></li><li>Amor Towles, <i>A Gentleman in Moscow </i></li><li>Sean O'Nan, <i>Ocean State </i></li><li>Philippe Besson, <i>In the Absence of Men</i></li><li>Mary Renault, <i>The Praise Singer</i></li></ol><div><b>June</b></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Matthew P W Roberts, <i>Pride: Identity and the worship of self </i></li><li>Jonathan Rauch, <i>Denial: My 25 years without a soul </i></li><li>David McCullough, <i>1776: America and Britain at War </i></li><li>Douglas Stuart, <i>Young Mungo </i></li><li>David Haynes, <i>Right By My Side </i></li><li><b>Ronald Blythe, <i>Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside </i></b></li></ol><div><b>July</b></div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Claire Keegan, <i>Foster</i></li><li>Eve Tushnet, <i>Tenderness: A Gay Christian's Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God's Extravagant Love </i></li><li>Ted Sorensen, <i>Counselor: A life at the edge of history</i></li><li>Niamh Campbell, <i>We Were Young</i></li><li>Elizabeth Strout, <i>Lucy by the Sea</i></li></ol><div><b>August </b></div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Tony Horsfall, <i>Spiritual Growth in a Time of Change: Following God in midlife</i></li><li>Christopher Landau, <i>Loving Disagreement: The problem is the solution </i></li><li>Roger Preece, <i>Understanding and Using Power: Leadership without Corrupting Your Soul </i></li><li>Adrian Bell, <i>The Cherry Tree</i></li><li>Peter F Drucker, <i>Managing Oneself </i></li><li>Maggie O'Farrell, <i>I am, I am, I am</i></li><li>Madeline Miller, <i>The Song of Achilles</i></li><li>Rachel Cusk, <i>Outline</i></li></ol><div><b>September</b></div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>CS Lewis, <i>The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe</i></li><li>CS Lewis, <i>Prince Caspian </i></li><li>CS Lewis, <i>The Voyage of the Dawn Treader</i></li><li>CS Lewis, <i>The Horse and His Boy</i></li><li>CS Lewis, <i>The Silver Chair</i></li><li>CS Lewis, <i>The Magician's Nephew</i></li><li><b>CS Lewis, <i>Mere Christianity </i></b></li><li>CS Lewis, <i>The Last Battle </i></li><li>Hua Hsu, <i>Stay True: A Memoir</i></li><li>Annie Dillard, <i>The Writing Life </i></li><li>Margaret Laurence, <i>A Jest of God</i></li><li>Tim Chester, <i>Enjoying God: Experience the power and love of God in everyday life</i></li><li><b>Dominic Sandbrook, <i>Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982</i></b></li><li>Alistair Gordon, <i>Why Art Matters</i></li><li>Penelope Fitzgerald, <i>The Beginning of Spring</i></li></ol><div><b>October </b></div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Gregory E Ganssle, <i>Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations</i></li><li><b>Malcolm Guite, <i>Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God </i></b></li><li>Brandon Taylor, <i>The Late Americans </i>[Audiobook]</li><li>Annie Dillard, <i>The Living: A Novel </i></li><li>Karen Swallow Prior, <i>The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis </i></li></ol><div><b>November </b></div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Michael Green, <i>Baptism: Its purpose, practice and power </i></li><li>Zora Neale Hurston, <i>Their Eyes Were Watching God</i></li><li>Winifred Peck, <i>House-Bound</i></li><li>Tom Wright, <i>The Meal Jesus Gave Us: Understanding Holy Communion </i></li><li>John Mark Comer, <i>The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world </i></li><li>Rory Stewart, <i>Politics On the Edge </i>[Audiobook] </li></ol><div><b>December</b></div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Mary Renault, <i>The Mask of Apollo</i></li><li>Victor Heringer, <i>The Love of Singular Men</i></li><li>Julia Strachey, <i>Cheerful Weather for the Wedding</i></li><li>Zachary Wagner, <i>Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering healthy male sexuality </i></li><li>Tim Chester, <i>Fixated: Advent meditations from the book of Hebrews </i></li><li><b>David Brooks, <i>How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen</i></b></li><li>JRR Tolkien, <i>The Fellowship of the Ring </i>[Audiobook] </li><li><b>Arnold Bennett, <i>Anna of the Five Towns</i></b></li></ol></div></div><p></p>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-41456746151446856082023-12-27T16:02:00.005+00:002023-12-27T16:02:48.660+00:00THE GREAT FAIRY-STORY<div style="text-align: justify;">'The Gospels contain a fairy-story, a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels - peculiarly artistic, beautiful and moving; 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfilment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. The story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality'. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of the Primary Art, that is Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">JRR Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories in <i>The Monster and the Critics</i>, p.155.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-61667905450531470992023-12-27T15:52:00.003+00:002023-12-27T15:52:58.469+00:00THE HOPE IN FAIRY STORIES<div style="text-align: justify;">'The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale - or otherworld - setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of <i>dyscatastrophe</i>, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is <i>evangelium,</i> giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is the mark of a good fairy story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to the child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given my any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">JRR Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories in <i>The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays</i>, p.153.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-22427755036380988872023-12-27T13:32:00.005+00:002023-12-27T13:32:37.638+00:00SUCCESSFUL FRIENDSHIP<div style="text-align: justify;">'Successful friendship, like successful therapy, is a balance of deference and defiance. It involves showing positive regard, but also calling people on their self-deceptions.'</div><span style="font-size: xx-small;">David Brooks, <i>How to Know a Person, </i>p.257.</span>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-12981516869541830112023-12-26T16:51:00.001+00:002023-12-26T16:51:23.641+00:00WRITING IS ACTUALLY READING <div style="text-align: justify;">'The writer David Lodge once noted that 90 percent of what we call writing is actually reading. It's going back over your work so you can change and improve it.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">David Brooks, <i>How to Know a Person, </i>p.167.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-64114864959192760232023-12-26T16:48:00.001+00:002023-12-26T16:48:02.536+00:00DEPRESSION DEFINED<div style="text-align: justify;">'..malfunction of the instrument we use to determine reality...'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Michael Gerson in David Brooks, <i>How to Know People</i>, p.128. </span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-87759823487538972132023-12-26T16:44:00.004+00:002023-12-26T16:44:53.384+00:00POWER DYNAMICS<div style="text-align: justify;">'Remember that the person who is lower in any power structure than you has a greater awareness of the situation than you do. A servant knows more about his master than the master knows about the servant. Someone who is being sat on knows a lot more about the sitter - the way he shifts his weight and moves - whereas the sitter may not be aware that the sat-on person is even there.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">David Brooks, H<i>ow to Know a Person,</i> p.115.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-63255739556273968762023-12-26T16:40:00.002+00:002023-12-26T16:40:32.443+00:00EACH PERSON IS A MYSTERY<div style="text-align: justify;">'Each person is a mystery. And when you are surrounded by mysteries, as the saying goes, it's best to live life in the from of a question.'</div><span style="font-size: xx-small;">David Brooks, <i>How to Know a Person</i>, p.93. </span>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-39261728969223636332023-12-26T16:37:00.005+00:002023-12-26T16:37:28.701+00:00A GOOD CONVERSATION <div style="text-align: justify;">'A good conversation is an act of joint exploration. Somebody floats a half-formed idea. Somebody else seizes on the nub of the idea, plays with it, offers her own perspective based on her memories, and floats it back so the other person can respond. A good conversation sparks yo to have thoughts you have never had before. A good conversation starts in one place and ends up in another.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">David Brooks, <i>How to Know a Person</i>, p.73.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-70421846558740741142023-12-26T16:33:00.001+00:002023-12-26T16:33:08.549+00:00EVERY PERSON AN ARTIST<div style="text-align: justify;">'Every person you meet is an artist who takes the events of life and, over time, creates a very personal way of seeing the world.'</div><span style="font-size: xx-small;">David Brooks, <i>How to Know a Person</i>, p.64. </span>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-50090485031153239562023-12-26T16:30:00.001+00:002023-12-26T16:30:13.962+00:00SIMPLISTIC DESCRIPTIONS<div style="text-align: justify;">One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some a particular way - said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic and so on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but very river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy, or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently he is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Leo Tolstoy in David Brooks, <i>How to Know a Person</i>, p.36.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-16799852618976525322023-12-26T16:21:00.000+00:002023-12-26T16:21:02.696+00:00LIFE SKILLS <div style="text-align: justify;">'The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another's point of view.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">These are some of the most important skills a human being can possess, and yet we don't teach them in school. Some days it seems like we have intentionally built a society that gives people little guidance of how to perform the most important activities of life.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">David Brooks, <i>How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen,</i> p.8.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-7821574895049372002023-12-23T17:27:00.008+00:002023-12-23T17:28:24.337+00:00TRUE COMPLEMENTARIANISM?<div style="text-align: justify;">'Any human endeavor done without the input, support, and cooperation of both sexes is not a fully human endeavor.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Zachary Wagner, <i>Non-Toxic Masculinity: recovering healthy male sexuality,</i> p.180.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-69565393448385961632023-11-23T09:23:00.001+00:002023-11-23T09:23:25.084+00:00THE POWER OF THE SYMBOLIC '...symbolic actions are among the most powerful things in the world...'<br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Tom Wright, <i>The Meal Jesus Gave Us: Understanding Holy Communion</i>, p.59. </span>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-18366691286856105172023-11-21T08:09:00.001+00:002023-11-21T08:09:10.954+00:00SELF-KNOWLEDGE <p>'We're all of us the better for seeing a caricature of ourselves now and again!'<br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Winifred Peck, <i>House-Bound</i>, p.244. </span></p>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-52521477603574221252023-10-29T09:21:00.001+00:002023-10-29T09:21:03.571+00:00EVERYONE INTERPRETS <div style="text-align: justify;">'Wrong interpretation is dangerous, and we must strive to avoid it. But lack of awareness that one is interpreting and that one interprets in community, within a tradition, is more dangerous. It is a danger to which evangelicals - with all their innovations and individualism - are particularly prone.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Karen Swallow Prior, <i>The Evangelical Imagination, </i> p.255.</span></div>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7689450959130148539.post-55803736027587203292023-10-29T09:17:00.000+00:002023-10-29T09:17:03.826+00:00THE EVANGELICAL CRISIS OF CREDIBILITY <div style="text-align: justify;">'If the Reformation was a crisis of authority - one that rightly gave the highest authority to the Bible rather than the priests - then this reckoning (or perhaps even a new reformation) is one of credibility: Do we who profess to believe in the authority of the Word present ourselves as credible witnesses of that Way, Truth, and that Life?'</div><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Karen Swallow Prior, <i>The Evangelical Imagination,</i> p.231. </span>Ed Shawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05187321750138378324noreply@blogger.com