Just swamped – at home, at work, and all the rest. I have been since roughly the last time I blogged. Happy New Year, everyone!

School is back in session, and we are reading some tremendous stuff in my classes. Here is a taste, if you care:

In my general education course on Christian doctrine we are finishing up a discussion on a remarkable book by a friend of mine, Brad Kallenberg: Live to Tell: Evangelism in a Postmodern Age. If you are a student, a churchgoer, a pastor, a teacher, an evangelist, or even a skeptic, read it. I will be recommending this book to everyone. Here and here (Adobe Acrobat) are the presentations I have been delivering on the book, if you want an executive summary and a foretaste, but to do it justice you really need to read the book itself.

In my upper-division course in contemporary world theology, we are getting things off to the right start with Hans Urs von Balthasar's Credo: Meditations on the Apostles' Creed. A series of brief letters from von B at the end of his life, this is 100 pages of simplicity and profundity that distills the heart of Trinitarian Christian theology the way only a master can. Here is my class presentation on its pages on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as well as on a lovely edited voluem we are reading as a companion text: Christopher Seitz, Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism. Taste and see: the Lord is good.

Will I continue blogging? I don't know. My enthusiasm has certainly waned. Right now my attention is focused more on the life of my school and its students. Blogger makes every posting an exercise in frustration, and I am not yet ready to choose another platform because the one I want to use is not yet available for Windows. Besides, I haven't had much to say lately. I am in input mode rather than output mode. Almost every text I have adopted for my classes is new to me, so I have to read a lot of material carefully. I have writing assignments to do for traditional publishing outlets, and I am behind. My plate is full and I am a little burned out on this particular medium. It is, after all, a pretty demanding one.

Still, I appreciate the nudges from some of you to get back into the habit. Some time ago Camassia suggested a group theology blog, which would be appealing with the right mix of contributors.

We'll see.

Shabbat shalom.

4:54 PM