The Valley of Vision: Puritan Prayers

Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions
Before my classes, I often read a prayer from the book Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions. There is something about reading the words of Christians from an earlier time that removes us from our view of the world and faith. The same is true of prayers before the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries too, even though these are post-Reformation prayers!

Every once in a while, one of the prayers will particularly stand out to me. That was the case with the prayer from yesterday: "The Life Look" (p. 54). One of the lines goes as follows: "I want no other rock to build upon than that I have, desire no other hope than that of gospel truth, need no other look than that which gazes on the cross."

The prayer ends with these words: "O God, hear me, do for me more than I ask, think, or dream."

Popular posts from this blog

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Jesus, Bruce Fisk

Image
I have just finished Bruce Fisk's enjoyable and fun A Hitchhiker's Guide to Jesus: Reading the Gospels on the Ground (Baker Academic, 2011). I saw the book in a Baker Academic announcement a couple weeks ago, and since I am teaching a course on Jesus and the Synoptic Tradition this coming fall, I thought I should check it out (not to mention that Bruce Fisk teaches at my alma mater Westmont College). After reading the first chapter, I was hooked and knew that I would be placing the book on the required reading list for my course. When my copy first arrived, I read through the comments from an impressive list of academics and was a bit skeptical of what seemed like overly positive praise. Rereading those comments now, they are right on. For example, Gary Burge states: "Bruce Fisk has possibly written the most creative, fascinating, and informed book on the Gospels in a generation..." For me, what makes this book so appealing is the way in which Fisk weaves together ...
Read more

John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel -- Second Edition

Image
I have recently finished reading through John Ashton's second edition of his work Understanding the Fourth Gospel (OUP, 2007), and it is not merely the Technicolor version of the original publication (1991), although it may look that way. His introduction has had a significant overhaul in the second edition that streamlines the discussion, but the first edition's introduction may offer further background for readers on the state of play prior to Ashton, especially regarding Bultmann's contribution. The second edition has some rearrangement of chapters and four new excursuses. John Ashton's overall study remains the same: he argues for the importance of the theme of revelation in John's Gospel and disagrees with Bultmann's conclusion that all Jesus reveals is that he is the Revealer. Ashton concludes that the mode of the revelation, the gospel, has a part to play in the revelation. For the Fourth Gospel, revelation is not just about Jesus' words or the...
Read more