Fr Richard John Neuhaus died today (January 8, 2009) of complications from cancer.
He didn't know it - hardly anybody knew it - but Fr Neuhaus was one of the most important men in my life. I don't believe that I actually ever met him. I did sit immediately behind him on the dais at the commencement ceremonies of the University of Dallas in 1993, when I received the year's Distinguished Alumnus award and Fr Neuhaus was (if memory serves) the commencement speaker. I would have tapped him on the shoulder during a lull in the ceremony and introduced myself, but at that time, he was just a name to me. Subsequently, as I worked my way back into the Church by the normal WMBP method - namely, lots of reading and probably way too little prayer - I discovered Fr Neuhaus's writings, and then learned more about his personal story as well. And so he became important to me not just as a teacher but as - well, I hate the word "role model" and it doesn't fit here any way. So let me say it plainly: he's a hero to me, a sort of modern Cardinal Newman. Neuhaus is in that small set of celebrities that I'd actually cross the street to meet.
Fr Neuhaus is especially well known as the founder of First Things. I've been a subscriber to First Things for a number of years now. It remains one of the handful of periodicals that I would truly hate to live without. And the first thing I read every month is the long section at the back containing Fr Neuhaus's comments. Just the other day I was reading to my wife a page that Fr Neuhaus had written in response to fellow Dallasite (and fellow "crunchy con") Rod Dreher, who was undergoing his own conversion process at the same time I was going through mine, except that he decided to leave the Roman Catholic Church for Holy Orthodoxy. I came fairly close to making that decision myself, but at the last minute, I decided to look again to see if there weren't Catholic thinkers with answers to the questions I had. Damned if there weren't. Fr Neuhaus was one of them. And now, instead of being a bad Orthodox Christian, I'm a bad Catholic.
Joseph Bottum's notice of Fr Neuhaus's death says it exactly right: we mourn now not for Fr Neuhaus, but for ourselves, for having lost him. I am glad that Bottum and the many other contributors to First Things are still here and I'm sure the magazine will remain important to me. But it's going to be impossible to fill that gap at the end of each issue where Fr Neuhaus used to write The Public Square.
Today, First Things' web site reposted one of Fr Neuhaus's articles from 2000, "Born toward Dying." I recommend it especially to my own daughters. I will pray for Fr Neuhaus, for after all, none of knows the heart of another and I have no reason to think that Fr Neuhaus was a superstar of piety. But I feel confident that he, like my old teacher and friend Fr Placid Czismazia, O.Cist., is on his way to heaven, and now that his editorial duties have been relaxed, I hope that Fr Neuhaus can pray for me, too.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Sex sex sex!
Here's an article from The Guardian (UK) about the Olympic committee testing athletes to make sure that men are men and women are women and never the twain shall compete in the same events. Reminds me of one of my pet peeves. No, not men masquerading as women. That's weird, but what are you gonna do? No, the pet peeve is the use of the word "gender" when the correct word would be "sex".
If this is news to you - and it's news to a lot of people who actually finished grammar school - gender is a grammatical term whose options are masculine, feminine and neuter, while sex is a biological term and its options are male and female.
Take the classic example of das Fraulein. Sex: female. Gender: neuter. If you wonder how a word that means "young lady" can be neuter, you don't understand grammatical gender at all. It often has nothing to do with sex. Why is the German word for cigar ("Zigarre") feminine? Don't ask a Freudian.
I don't remember noticing this confusion until after I started teaching in the 1980s. At that time, "gender studies" was a big fad in universities and the word "gender" got thrown around a lot. The word "gender" was used because the folks studying "gender" weren't interested in sexual realities. It's hard to maintain, for example, that men and women are in all important respects identical if you're thinking about sex. So "gender" was picked up to suggest that biology is unimportant and that what matters are the roles that we play in life. Reminds me of a scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian:
The gender studies types were helped, no doubt, by the fact that "sex" has always struck some genteel American city-dwellers as a dirty word. Sex is a word that makes grade school girls blush, makes high school boys giggle, and makes elderly ladies nervous. On forms, the word "sex" prompted teenage boys to want to scratch out "M" and "F" and write in "Yes". Or perhaps, "Yes, please."
So now we get news stories about the Olympic Committee testing athletes to make sure they are the right gender. What will they do when they discover that all the unmarried women on the German team are actually neuter?
If this is news to you - and it's news to a lot of people who actually finished grammar school - gender is a grammatical term whose options are masculine, feminine and neuter, while sex is a biological term and its options are male and female.
Take the classic example of das Fraulein. Sex: female. Gender: neuter. If you wonder how a word that means "young lady" can be neuter, you don't understand grammatical gender at all. It often has nothing to do with sex. Why is the German word for cigar ("Zigarre") feminine? Don't ask a Freudian.
I don't remember noticing this confusion until after I started teaching in the 1980s. At that time, "gender studies" was a big fad in universities and the word "gender" got thrown around a lot. The word "gender" was used because the folks studying "gender" weren't interested in sexual realities. It's hard to maintain, for example, that men and women are in all important respects identical if you're thinking about sex. So "gender" was picked up to suggest that biology is unimportant and that what matters are the roles that we play in life. Reminds me of a scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian:
Judith: [on Stan's desire to be a mother] Here! I've got an idea: Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb - which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans' - but that he can have the *right* to have babies.And a noble struggle it is. Anyway, we can thank the gender studies folks - who are still going strong, as far as I can tell - for hijacking the grammatical term gender and pushing it into wider use.
Francis: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother... sister, sorry.
Reg: What's the point?
Francis: What?
Reg: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can't have babies?
Francis: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
Reg: It's symbolic of his struggle against reality.
The gender studies types were helped, no doubt, by the fact that "sex" has always struck some genteel American city-dwellers as a dirty word. Sex is a word that makes grade school girls blush, makes high school boys giggle, and makes elderly ladies nervous. On forms, the word "sex" prompted teenage boys to want to scratch out "M" and "F" and write in "Yes". Or perhaps, "Yes, please."
So now we get news stories about the Olympic Committee testing athletes to make sure they are the right gender. What will they do when they discover that all the unmarried women on the German team are actually neuter?
Friday, November 11, 2005
Side Effects
We saw the movie Mad Hot Ballroom tonight. Delightful film - I recommend it highly. It's a documentary about a program in New York City to teach ballroom dancing to inner-city fifth graders. The project seems improbable on its face, but it turns out to be a big success. The children actually learn to dance: tango, meringue, rumba and others. The film also shows that hard work and discipline, acquired in the context of competition, can have side effects that are very beneficial. The children get some direction. They get a sense of pride in what they can accomplish. One girl who is described by her principal as having been a discipline problem in fourth grade is changed by her involvement in the dance program; she hasn't been in trouble all year. On the other hand, not everybody is helped. One boy who apparently has some talent as a dancer simply can't get into the dancing. As the competition draws near and team assignments have to be made, the teacher puts him on the spot: get serious about dancing or leave. He leaves. Later in the film he wishes the school's dance team well, but he says he himself is only interested in playing basketball.
The film resonated with me. For grades six through eight, I attended what was then known as the Columbus Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey. At that time - early '60s - the Columbus Boychoir was certainly one of the best boys choirs in the world, if not the very best. As a member of the choir, I toured the country and Europe, appeared repeatedly on national television, had the pleasure of appearing on stage with some of the best conductors and soloists in the world, including Erich Leinsdorf in Boston and Leonard Bernstein in New York. I was on stage as a member of the choir for the inaugural concert at Lincoln Center.
Now unlike the fifth graders who dance in Mad Hot Ballroom, we boychoir members were an elite. We auditioned to get into the school. And we worked hard, rehearsing three hours a day, six days a week. But just like the children in the movie, we boys in the choir learned a lot of fantastic life lessons, about discipline and hard work, about striving for excellence, about working with others as a member of a group, about living up to expectations, dealing with pressure, and more.
But to get the benefit of those lessons, I had to take the music seriously. The same is true of the children in New York. Administrators might institute a dance program with ulterior motives, but the program will surely be a failure if the children and their teachers don't take the dancing seriously.
This is true of many things in life. I learned a lot of indirect stuff about grammar, word roots, etc., from the study of Latin, but I wouldn't have learned that stuff if I hadn't been able to get interested in Latin in itself. I learned some great lessons from playing soccer for three years in high school, but again, I wouldn't have learned those lessons if I hadn't been able to get truly interested in soccer. If I hadn't cared about winning and about doing my best for the team while we were on the field, I wouldn't have had a reason to become as good a player as I was capable of becoming.
This is preeminently true of religion. Perhaps nothing else in life has the ability to have so profound an effect on your life as religion. When you believe in God and attend church, you learn to measure yourself against an impossible standard and strive to become better than you know you can be. You pray and learn to examine your own failings candidly and bravely. You learn humility. These are somewhat accidental benefits, but they are quite real. And yet, you can only realize these benefits if you can first take religion seriously.
The film resonated with me. For grades six through eight, I attended what was then known as the Columbus Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey. At that time - early '60s - the Columbus Boychoir was certainly one of the best boys choirs in the world, if not the very best. As a member of the choir, I toured the country and Europe, appeared repeatedly on national television, had the pleasure of appearing on stage with some of the best conductors and soloists in the world, including Erich Leinsdorf in Boston and Leonard Bernstein in New York. I was on stage as a member of the choir for the inaugural concert at Lincoln Center.
Now unlike the fifth graders who dance in Mad Hot Ballroom, we boychoir members were an elite. We auditioned to get into the school. And we worked hard, rehearsing three hours a day, six days a week. But just like the children in the movie, we boys in the choir learned a lot of fantastic life lessons, about discipline and hard work, about striving for excellence, about working with others as a member of a group, about living up to expectations, dealing with pressure, and more.
But to get the benefit of those lessons, I had to take the music seriously. The same is true of the children in New York. Administrators might institute a dance program with ulterior motives, but the program will surely be a failure if the children and their teachers don't take the dancing seriously.
This is true of many things in life. I learned a lot of indirect stuff about grammar, word roots, etc., from the study of Latin, but I wouldn't have learned that stuff if I hadn't been able to get interested in Latin in itself. I learned some great lessons from playing soccer for three years in high school, but again, I wouldn't have learned those lessons if I hadn't been able to get truly interested in soccer. If I hadn't cared about winning and about doing my best for the team while we were on the field, I wouldn't have had a reason to become as good a player as I was capable of becoming.
This is preeminently true of religion. Perhaps nothing else in life has the ability to have so profound an effect on your life as religion. When you believe in God and attend church, you learn to measure yourself against an impossible standard and strive to become better than you know you can be. You pray and learn to examine your own failings candidly and bravely. You learn humility. These are somewhat accidental benefits, but they are quite real. And yet, you can only realize these benefits if you can first take religion seriously.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Not quite 10 ways to know you're becoming a Windows user
1. You buy a Dell Inspiron 6000, and then start using it full time, even though you have a perfectly good Apple PowerBook G4 (Aluminum) running OS X.4 within reach.
2. You start moving your files from the PowerBook to the Dell.
3. You buy and install a Netgear wireless router, replacing your Apple Airport Extreme base station. You manage to configure the router successfully even though doing so requires support calls to both Netgear and Dell and the downloading of an update for the Inspiron's ethernet port driver. Who knew that ethernet ports had drivers! It's exciting to learn new stuff.
4. When you have to travel, you worry about whether you should bring the Dell (which now has all your "stuff" on it, so you could actually DO something useful while at the client's offices) or the PowerBook (which it would hurt less to lose).
5. To kill time while waiting in the airport to fly home, you buy - and then read, cover to cover - a copy of PC Magazine (November 22, 2005). You note with satisfaction that the Dell Inspiron 6000 is in PC Magazine's list of top-ten laptops and described as an "outstanding value." You read a review of Norton Internet Security (which came preinstalled on the Dell) with genuine interest and make a note of the fact that, while PC Mag likes NIS, they like ZoneAlarm even better, and you decide to visit Fry's a.s.a.p. to buy ZoneAlarm.
6. When you can't successfully register the copy of SnagIt 7 that you downloaded and have now purchased, you write to SnagIt 7 tech support, and then, all on your own, realize that you need to log into your computer with admin privileges to get the program to accept your licensing key. So you do, and it does.
7. You start moving your photos out of iPhoto into Picasa and decide that you like Picasa better.
8. You make a to-do memo that reads, "Download and install iTunes for Windows a.s.a.p."
9. You find that one of the joys of the Dell is that it allows you to run great non-Microsoft software like Firefox, Google Desktop, Google Earth (wow!) and Picasa (also from Google - seems to be a pattern there) and OpenOffice.org 2. You discover that SnagIt 7 compares very favorably to SnapzPro X, and that As-You-Type is actually better than TypeIt4Me.
Well, if I worked hard, I could come up with 1 more reason to make it an even 10. But you get the point.
I will admit one thing: I'm using my Apple Mighty Mouse, instead of the Microsoft "Intellimouse" that I have.
2. You start moving your files from the PowerBook to the Dell.
3. You buy and install a Netgear wireless router, replacing your Apple Airport Extreme base station. You manage to configure the router successfully even though doing so requires support calls to both Netgear and Dell and the downloading of an update for the Inspiron's ethernet port driver. Who knew that ethernet ports had drivers! It's exciting to learn new stuff.
4. When you have to travel, you worry about whether you should bring the Dell (which now has all your "stuff" on it, so you could actually DO something useful while at the client's offices) or the PowerBook (which it would hurt less to lose).
5. To kill time while waiting in the airport to fly home, you buy - and then read, cover to cover - a copy of PC Magazine (November 22, 2005). You note with satisfaction that the Dell Inspiron 6000 is in PC Magazine's list of top-ten laptops and described as an "outstanding value." You read a review of Norton Internet Security (which came preinstalled on the Dell) with genuine interest and make a note of the fact that, while PC Mag likes NIS, they like ZoneAlarm even better, and you decide to visit Fry's a.s.a.p. to buy ZoneAlarm.
6. When you can't successfully register the copy of SnagIt 7 that you downloaded and have now purchased, you write to SnagIt 7 tech support, and then, all on your own, realize that you need to log into your computer with admin privileges to get the program to accept your licensing key. So you do, and it does.
7. You start moving your photos out of iPhoto into Picasa and decide that you like Picasa better.
8. You make a to-do memo that reads, "Download and install iTunes for Windows a.s.a.p."
9. You find that one of the joys of the Dell is that it allows you to run great non-Microsoft software like Firefox, Google Desktop, Google Earth (wow!) and Picasa (also from Google - seems to be a pattern there) and OpenOffice.org 2. You discover that SnagIt 7 compares very favorably to SnapzPro X, and that As-You-Type is actually better than TypeIt4Me.
Well, if I worked hard, I could come up with 1 more reason to make it an even 10. But you get the point.
I will admit one thing: I'm using my Apple Mighty Mouse, instead of the Microsoft "Intellimouse" that I have.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Cutting the umbilical cord
It is one thing to move from a Powerbook to a Dell. It's another and even scarier thing to give up on Apple's Airport. But I've done it.
My wireless network has, for the last several years, been built around Apple's Airport technology. When I got the Dell Inspiron 6000 two weeks ago, I was using an Airport Extreme base station with an Airport Express ancillary access point (in the living room, so we could play music from iTunes to our stereo). Although the network hardware was Apple, the Dell was able to get on the Internet without any difficulty.
But afterwards, I began to think that perhaps I should switch to a non-Apple wireless router, for a couple of reasons. First, Apple's Airport Extreme and Airport Express hardware has to be configured from a Mac. It would be nice if I could configure the network from the Dell or, indeed, from any machine running any operating system, using a Web browser. Second, I've been told by the tech folks at Speakeasy.net (our top-notch Internet access provider) that, perhaps because we're so close to the central station, we should be getting a great signal, and that we should notice how good it is because Web pages should leap open. I've not often complained about the Web, but I wouldn't say pages were leaping open, either. Third, I was hoping to get a router that had a better firewall built into it than the Apple base station seems to have.
Tim at Speakeasy.net suggested that Linksys might be a good choice for a mixed-platform network, so on Saturday I tried a Linksys router. I couldn't get it configured. I concluded that the problem was mainly with the "wizard," which, to my mind, was simply terrible. Right from the start, there were options available to me that weren't clearly identified as options. Up at the top of the wizard's screen, there would be a description of what was about to happen, followed by a button labeled Next. Then, down below the Next button, there was a description of something else, with another button. There were many such confusions in the wizard. Anyway, after an hour of frustration, I gave up, reconfigured the Apple network, and put the Linksys back in its packaging.
Last night, I found an old (2002) Macworld review of non-Apple wireless routers. The review rated a Netgear router tops, so today I took the Linksys back to Frye's and exchanged it for a Netgear model.
The Netgear wizard was hardly better than the Linksys one. The "read me first" piece of paper in the router's packaging suggests that you set the router up but says explicitly that you should not plug it in immediately; instead, you should insert the installation CD and follow the instructions. One of the first screens displayed by the installation "wizard" observed that I was not connected to the Internet. Well, duh. That's what the wireless router was for, and I had not yet been told to connect it to the computer or do anything else. They really need to test their wizards.
Anyway, this time I decided to try Netgear support. A nice fellow with a heavy Indian accent told me to plug in the router's power cable, and also to connect the router to my computer's Ethernet port (with an Ethernet cable, obviously). So I did. At this point, I gather that the wizard was supposed to be able to sense an Internet connection, but it couldn't. Eventually, the support guy told me that the problem seemed to be with my Ethernet port and he suggested that I call Dell.
So I called Dell. A nice lady whose Indian accent was less noticeable than the Netgear guy's, helped me update the driver from my Ethernet port, by doing a download from Dell's web site. That fixed the problem. After that, I was able to enable the port, type in the default URL for the browser-based configuration pages, and configure the router manually. I never did actually use the so-called wizard. I'm now connected to the Internet using the Netgear router.
Couple quick notes about all this.
First, I just have to observe that I almost never have to go to this much trouble to install something from Apple. The last time I had serious trouble with a Mac installation was about a year ago, when a Canon scanner (that I purchased from the Apple Store here in Dallas) wouldn't install or work until I'd spent an hour online with a Canon support guy. But the problem here wasn't just with the hardware, it was mainly with the wizards that were supposed to make things easy. The installation wizards for the Linksys and the Netgear routers were, by Apple standards, terrible. The options are badly presented, the instructions are inconsistent, and the feedback that you get when there's an error is useless. And of course if you step away from the wizards thinking, I've got the info I need, so I'll just configure everything manually, well, Heaven help you. The Windows XP control panels are a labyrinth of dialogs with mysterious options. What is a QoS Packet Scheduler and does it really need to be enabled? What's the difference between an access-point-preferred network and an access-point (infrastructure) network, and which should I use?
Second, the tech support folks for Netgear and Dell were patient and helpful and did, in fact, get me to a resolution of my problem. I think the Netgear guy should perhaps have considered asking me to check the driver for my Ethernet port. But I'm grateful both to Netgear and Dell for having support folks available on Sunday afternoon.
Third, now that I've got the Netgear router configured, my network is once again working fine, and indeed, I think it does seem zippier than it did before. Pages actually do seem to leap into the browser window now.
The hardware in the PC world seems to me to be pretty good. Not sleek and sexy, but certainly functional. And some of the applications I use - Picasa comes to mind - match Apple's standards for user friendliness pretty well. But boy, anything that has to do with configuring the computer is lousy. Networking has always been something of a black art, and wireless networking is twice as bad as the old-fashioned kind. It doesn't need to be so hard! I'm available to any company that wants help writing a wizard that's truly user-friendly and easy to use.
My wireless network has, for the last several years, been built around Apple's Airport technology. When I got the Dell Inspiron 6000 two weeks ago, I was using an Airport Extreme base station with an Airport Express ancillary access point (in the living room, so we could play music from iTunes to our stereo). Although the network hardware was Apple, the Dell was able to get on the Internet without any difficulty.
But afterwards, I began to think that perhaps I should switch to a non-Apple wireless router, for a couple of reasons. First, Apple's Airport Extreme and Airport Express hardware has to be configured from a Mac. It would be nice if I could configure the network from the Dell or, indeed, from any machine running any operating system, using a Web browser. Second, I've been told by the tech folks at Speakeasy.net (our top-notch Internet access provider) that, perhaps because we're so close to the central station, we should be getting a great signal, and that we should notice how good it is because Web pages should leap open. I've not often complained about the Web, but I wouldn't say pages were leaping open, either. Third, I was hoping to get a router that had a better firewall built into it than the Apple base station seems to have.
Tim at Speakeasy.net suggested that Linksys might be a good choice for a mixed-platform network, so on Saturday I tried a Linksys router. I couldn't get it configured. I concluded that the problem was mainly with the "wizard," which, to my mind, was simply terrible. Right from the start, there were options available to me that weren't clearly identified as options. Up at the top of the wizard's screen, there would be a description of what was about to happen, followed by a button labeled Next. Then, down below the Next button, there was a description of something else, with another button. There were many such confusions in the wizard. Anyway, after an hour of frustration, I gave up, reconfigured the Apple network, and put the Linksys back in its packaging.
Last night, I found an old (2002) Macworld review of non-Apple wireless routers. The review rated a Netgear router tops, so today I took the Linksys back to Frye's and exchanged it for a Netgear model.
The Netgear wizard was hardly better than the Linksys one. The "read me first" piece of paper in the router's packaging suggests that you set the router up but says explicitly that you should not plug it in immediately; instead, you should insert the installation CD and follow the instructions. One of the first screens displayed by the installation "wizard" observed that I was not connected to the Internet. Well, duh. That's what the wireless router was for, and I had not yet been told to connect it to the computer or do anything else. They really need to test their wizards.
Anyway, this time I decided to try Netgear support. A nice fellow with a heavy Indian accent told me to plug in the router's power cable, and also to connect the router to my computer's Ethernet port (with an Ethernet cable, obviously). So I did. At this point, I gather that the wizard was supposed to be able to sense an Internet connection, but it couldn't. Eventually, the support guy told me that the problem seemed to be with my Ethernet port and he suggested that I call Dell.
So I called Dell. A nice lady whose Indian accent was less noticeable than the Netgear guy's, helped me update the driver from my Ethernet port, by doing a download from Dell's web site. That fixed the problem. After that, I was able to enable the port, type in the default URL for the browser-based configuration pages, and configure the router manually. I never did actually use the so-called wizard. I'm now connected to the Internet using the Netgear router.
Couple quick notes about all this.
First, I just have to observe that I almost never have to go to this much trouble to install something from Apple. The last time I had serious trouble with a Mac installation was about a year ago, when a Canon scanner (that I purchased from the Apple Store here in Dallas) wouldn't install or work until I'd spent an hour online with a Canon support guy. But the problem here wasn't just with the hardware, it was mainly with the wizards that were supposed to make things easy. The installation wizards for the Linksys and the Netgear routers were, by Apple standards, terrible. The options are badly presented, the instructions are inconsistent, and the feedback that you get when there's an error is useless. And of course if you step away from the wizards thinking, I've got the info I need, so I'll just configure everything manually, well, Heaven help you. The Windows XP control panels are a labyrinth of dialogs with mysterious options. What is a QoS Packet Scheduler and does it really need to be enabled? What's the difference between an access-point-preferred network and an access-point (infrastructure) network, and which should I use?
Second, the tech support folks for Netgear and Dell were patient and helpful and did, in fact, get me to a resolution of my problem. I think the Netgear guy should perhaps have considered asking me to check the driver for my Ethernet port. But I'm grateful both to Netgear and Dell for having support folks available on Sunday afternoon.
Third, now that I've got the Netgear router configured, my network is once again working fine, and indeed, I think it does seem zippier than it did before. Pages actually do seem to leap into the browser window now.
The hardware in the PC world seems to me to be pretty good. Not sleek and sexy, but certainly functional. And some of the applications I use - Picasa comes to mind - match Apple's standards for user friendliness pretty well. But boy, anything that has to do with configuring the computer is lousy. Networking has always been something of a black art, and wireless networking is twice as bad as the old-fashioned kind. It doesn't need to be so hard! I'm available to any company that wants help writing a wizard that's truly user-friendly and easy to use.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
N.T. Wright wins the Ramsey Prize
The Pontificator - one of my blogging heroes - notes that N.T. Wright has won the Michael Ramsey prize for theological writing for The Resurrection of the Son of God. Let it not be said that prizes go only to the undeserving! Wright's book is truly magisterial.
What it is not is light reading. I have a Ph.D. in Classics, read the Bible in Latin and Greek just about every day, and taught many of the classical and Biblical texts that Wright examines in his book - and yet I found it challenging, not because it's poorly written - it's not, Wright's prose is lucidity itself - but simply because he covers an astonishing amount of ground. An excellent, less demanding alternative to The Resurrection of the Son of God is Wright's little book Who Was Jesus? (Eerdmans, 1992).
What it is not is light reading. I have a Ph.D. in Classics, read the Bible in Latin and Greek just about every day, and taught many of the classical and Biblical texts that Wright examines in his book - and yet I found it challenging, not because it's poorly written - it's not, Wright's prose is lucidity itself - but simply because he covers an astonishing amount of ground. An excellent, less demanding alternative to The Resurrection of the Son of God is Wright's little book Who Was Jesus? (Eerdmans, 1992).
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