Author Archives: davetcourt

In Gail R. O’Day’s article titled I Have Called You Friends, she writes about the subject of friendship. She notes two dimensions of friendship in antiquity that can help us make sense of Jesus’ understanding of friendship—“the gift of one’s life for one’s friends and theuse of frank and open speech, (both) informed the wayContinue reading “The Command of Friendship: The Way of Jesus”

“And when now in our enlightened age, where all anthropomorphic and anthropopathic conceptions of God are deemed inappropriate, it is none the less not considered inappropriate to think of God as a judge, like an ordinary magistrate or a superior military judge…” I have a nephew who has been in university getting his degree inContinue reading “God as Judge: Questions about Anthropomorphizing”

I believe that Romans is commonly misread and misapplied due to prior allegiances to the idea of law as “works that save” and grace as “imputed righteousness”, or unmerited favor/grace. This understanding of the law versus faith/grace paradigm also lends itself to particular understandings of other terminology and ideas inherent in the text, such asContinue reading “Law, Gospel, and Misreading Romans”

In N.T. Wrights book The New Testament in His World, he writes of the process of canonization stating that “the New Testament canon was shaped and developed, in the first three centuries, because the leaders of the early church were determined to keep alive, and present afresh, the news that in Jesus the one trueContinue reading “Canonization: Liturgy in Diveristy”

I was listening to an interview with author Cole Arthur Riley on her book This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us In it she says that “the truest stories are rarely the ones that get told”. By this she means the stories we tell about ourselves, about others, and about theContinue reading “The Stories We Tell and the Narratives That Shape Us: Embodied Theology”

I was listening to an interview with new testament scholar John Dominic Crossan (titled The Other Gospels) on how it is that we understand the nature of the four Gospels and their adoption as liturgy in the life of the early church given that they emerged in a world where there were many gospels inContinue reading “The Narrative Gospels and the Importance of Story”

Matthew 16:13-1613 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you sayContinue reading “Who are you Jesus: The Importance of a Question”

Reading Journal 2023: Existentialism: A Very Short IntroductionAuthor: Thomas R. Flynn One might ask, is it possible to write a book that breaks existentialism down into words the common person can read and understand? Flynn gives this his best shot in this short introduction. But alas, if this is any indication, such a question isContinue reading “Reading Journal 2023: Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction”

(some pictures used from different promotional online sites or undocumentated available pictures online) A local resident to Alabama described their state to me in the following way- the money’s in Huntsville, the cultures in Birmingham, and the power is in Montgomery (meanwhile, the good folks over there in Mobile seem to defy definition). I wasContinue reading “Finding The Southern Narrative: An Alabama Roadtrip”

Rewind to summer 2022. More than a little stir crazy from a prolonged pandemic, borders had finally begun to swing open, offering us an opportunity to go somewhere. Anywhere but here was the mantra. After some time deliberating, we ended up in Oklahoma City. Why Oklahoma City is a question we would be asked moreContinue reading “To Birmingham and Beyond: Reclaiming Wonder in a Demythologized World”