A way of thinking and reading that is passing from the Church

…his story also leaves the reader with the feeling that we shall not see Oden’s like again. To recover tradition as he did, one must not simply see that modernity, or postmodernity, has failed. One must also have the tools for appropriating earlier patterns of thought…The texts that enabled Oden to rebuild his theology require time and effort to master. One cannot read Augustine in tweet-sized pieces. One cannot grasp the full significance of his thought from a Wikipedia article. Oden’s story assumes a way of thinking and a way of reading that is passing from the Church. The same basic questions about human existence remain, but I wonder if the rising generation will have even the technical skills to address them as Oden has done. Hypermodernity is superficial not just in its conclusions but also in its methods. The challenge to us is even greater than it was for Oden.

Carl R. Trueman, Review of A Change of Heart by Thomas C. Oden, in First Things, February 2015 (my emphasis)

Pastoral ministry as stochastic art

Some arts reliably attain their object - for example, the art of building. If the building falls down, one can say in retrospect that the builder didn’t know what he was doing. But there is another class of arts that Aristotle calls “stochastic”. An example is medicine. Mastery of a stochastic art is compatible with failure to achieve its end (health). As Aristotle writes, “It does not belong to medicine to produce health, but only to promote it as much as is possible…” Fixing things, whether cars or human bodies, is very different from building things from scratch. The mechanic and the doctor deal with failure every day, even if they are expert, whereas the builder does not. This is because the things they fix are not of their own making, and are therefore never known in a comprehensive or absolute way.This experience of failure tempers the conceit of mastery; the doctor and the mechanic have daily intercourse with the world as something independent, and a vivid awareness of the difference between self and nonself. Fixing things may be a cure for narcissism.

Matthew B. Crawford, in Shop Class as Soulcraft, p.81

Why I'm doing sermon prep by hand

"…for me the most important thing about handwriting has a lot to do with focus. I often feel like my thoughts act sort of like they are in a wind tunnel. It can make me easily distracted as a passing thought can occupy all of my attention. At a computer this is dangerous, as I can immediately chase down information relating to that thought, and get about three levels deep in related ideas and forget what I was doing initially. On paper if I get lost on a project I am far more likely to get lost in that project instead of floundering about elsewhere."

My Analog Life