It's a snowy but sunny day on campus! I'm teaching on the differences between the Gospels today and, as usual, I'm wearing my St. John's, Durham tie which has a pattern of little eagles (John's symbol, of course). It gets better: BC's athletics mascot is...an eagle.

"It was beautiful in its moral simplicity. It was also too good to be true." nytimes.com/2026/01/26/opi…

It's telling to see how many humanities professors on this site cannot even imagine someone pursuing the truth for its own sake rather than trying to be political with their scholarship.

Timelapse of How Christianity spread throughout the world

I can accept the student cheating and the devaluation of intellectual labor, but the one thing I can’t accept is artificial intelligence coming for my PDFs.

To discouraged academic job hunters: a family member tells me that at their prestigious Ivy-affiliated hospital, good nursing jobs that pay $100K+ with a signing bonus get maybe 3 applicants. Remember, the issue is not you or your CV, it's the job market (or lack thereof).

What a paragraph from Jake Meador:

I'm reading Narnia to my kids and I've always seen Lewis as a romantic. But I'm struck this week by his apocalypticism (otherworldly beings, Aslan vanishes then invades, etc.). He knew that even if the world ends, it does not make it less beautiful, it gains new beauty & meaning.

One of my working assumptions about eschatology is that its actual unfolding in the parousia of Christ will be full of surprises, broken categories, and upended theories, much as his first coming was.

‘If Job didn’t have a satisfactory experience with the Lord, where does that leave the rest of us?’ | Writes Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar

Worst of all, gym classes are making them run miles an Uber could cover in less than a minute.

CO-SIGN. It's an aesthetic thing, too. If writing is meant to be both beautiful and effective, to entertain as well as instruct (Horace), then an author should not repeat another's infelicities.

I mean, there's the elitism right there. There is "scarcely anywhere else" to "learn any theology" other than Oxbridge. Tell that to the brilliant PhDs I studied with who turned down full rides at Oxbridge to go to Durham. I made a similar decision. Oxbridge isn't everything.

This rings true across the pond. It's a multi-faceted phenomenon: churches do not typically encourage theological leadership and then those capable of it stick to the academy (or abandon it to 'serve the church'). Now whole segments of American Christianity are lost.

There's an inflection for scholars of Paul: Nietzsche doesn't read Paul well, but his criticism that Paul creates a religion for "weaklings" is a great lens for evaluating Pauline theologies of the cross. Don't lose sight of the resurrection! Handle Paul with care.

To honor World Book Day (in the UK), I'm sharing a recent acquisition: an 1884 edition of the New Testament, published in Boston and beautifully decorated. It was owned by an Isaac Shannon in 1888. #WorldBookDay2026