UPDATE: May 2000. My 1980 Toyota Corona has been towed to its final destination. It is indeed part of being human that we can appreciate and mourn a mechanical device (just watch The Brave Little Toaster!). This was the most loyal machine on the planet. For seven years it was our only means of transportation. It brought both our children home from the hospital, and it took us all over the United States. The odometer broke at 84,000, but it continued for six years after that, so it must have been about 160,000 miles. I will miss it and think of it always. I have pasted a picture of a 1981 Cressida above, as this was the closest picture I could find to my faithful friend. Farewell.
In 1998 I began trying to recapture my youth by going to all the concerts I didn't go to when I was a kid: Van Halen, Cheap Trick, and JUDAS PRIEST, not once, but TWICE! This continued in 1999 and 2000, as I went to Black Sabbath and then a hair band extravaganza with Great White, Ratt, and Poison. Not as rage and aggression filled as JUDAS PRIEST, but a lot of fun. In the fall 1999 I saw Cheap Trick again, and caught a Rick Nielsen guitar pick! In 2000 I saw Iron Maiden, with Rob Halford, former singer of JUDAS PRIEST, and I eagerly await JUDAS PRIEST'S next tour. Cheap Trick was the first band I saw in 2001. For tour info on any band or venue, click here
I love movies. For a great movie site, both for classics and current releases, click here. For my personal picks, click here. For movie showtimes in your area and to purchase tickets online, click here.
I'm also a great cook, so here are some
great recipes.
Humor is a very important part of life, so for my favorite joke of all time, click here.
In 1980 I bought my first JUDAS PRIEST album. Although I have not always been so devoted a fan, my commitment to HEAVY METAL has recently been reaffirmed. For the heavy metal part of my page,
CLICK HERE
I have very eclectic tastes in television viewing. Click on the images below to learn more about some of my favorites.
I used to teach the Core Humanities Seminar to first-year students at Villanova University, a job I love. I have also taught at
Southwestern Michigan College and
Eastern College. The curiosity and freshness that first-year students bring to the texts always give me pleasure and new insights into texts that I love, but which may have grown too familiar to me over the years. For four years, my students have DOMINATED the Core Humanities Writing Awards. To read some of their essays, click here. On the negative side, I have been deeply disappointed and shamed by how much plagiarism I have caught in my teaching, and I would discourage students everywhere from harming and limiting their educational experience by such behavior: in college, for the first time in your educational lives, you are being asked what you think, not what someone else thinks or what someone else has told you, and by turning in a plagiarized paper, you are just telling your teacher what someone else says, and cutting your own mind off from appreciating, analyzing, and criticizing what the greatest works have to offer us.
I have written part of the faculty manual on the
New Testament and on
Dante. As part of Core Humanities, I also teach in the Visions of Freedom Program, which is funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation. Click on the images below to learn more about some of the world's greatest books.
Here is a list of my publications, many of which are AVAILABLE ONLINE.
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
In Praise of Wisdom: Literary and Theological Reflections on Reason and FaithRead a sample chapter
Judas: Images of the Lost Disciple OR
Augustine and Liberal Education. Co-edited with K. Hughes. Ashgate Press, 2000.
The Story of Jesus according to L. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 147. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997.
ARTICLES
"Film Depictions of Judas."
"Wisdom of the Heart: The Human Encounter with God in Pensees and Moby-Dick." (Work in Progress)
"Teaching the Virtue and Pleasure of Friendship in Augustine and Dante." Paper read at the Conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, Notre Dame, IN, April 2001.
"Doestoevsky on Human Nature and Human Purpose." Paper read at Borders Books and Music, Bryn Mawr.
"Pleasure and Success in Teaching Dante." Paper read at the Conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, San Francisco, April 2000.
"Famines in Luke-Acts." The Expository Times (forthcoming).
"Soter," "Soteria," "Anastasis," "Ergon," "Epikaleo," "Koinonia," "Ekstasis," "Thambos," "Proorao," and "Pleroo." New Testament Language Project, Cambridge, MA (forthcoming).
"Bad Habits and Bad Company: Education and Evil in the Confessions." In Augustine and Liberal Education. Eds. K. Paffenroth and K. Hughes.
or
"Jesus as Anointed and Healing Son of David in the Gospel of Matthew." Biblica
"The Young Augustine: Lover of Sorrow." The Downside Review (forthcoming).
"Three Markan Stories of Women and Men, Action and Reaction, Praise and Blame." Anthropoetics
"Beyond Dichotomies: Mises' and Wojtyla's Anthropologies and Axiologies." In Beyond Self-Interest: A Personalist Approach to Human Action.
Articles on "Akeldama," "Chuza," "Gethsemane," "Mount of Olives," and "Scribes." In Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Ed. David N. Freedman.
or
"Allegorizations of the Active and Contemplative Lives in Philo, Origen, and Augustine." The Ecole Initiative
"Tears of Grief and Joy. Confessions Book 9: Chronological Sequence and Structure." Augustinian Studies 28 (1997) 141-54.
"The Testing of the Sage: 1 Kings 10:1-13 and Q 4:1-13." The Expository Times 107 (1996) 142-43.
"Christianity's Transforming Spirit." In Duty and Responsibility. Grand Rapids: The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
Various entries in The Encyclopedia of Catholicism. Ed. Richard P. McBrien. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995.
"The Character of Judas in Bach's St. Matthew Passion." The Midwest Quarterly 36 (1995) 125-35.
"Science or Story? The Star of Bethlehem." The Expository Times 106 (1994) 78-79.
"A Note on the Dating of Demetrius' On Style." The Classical Quarterly 44 (1994) 280-81.
"The Star of Bethlehem Casts Light on Its Modern Interpreters." Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 34 (1993) 449-60.
"Paulsen on Augustine: An Incorporeal or Nonanthropomorphic God?" Harvard Theological Review 86 (1993) 233-35.
"The Stories of the Fate of Judas and Differing Attitudes towards Sources." Proceedings: Eastern Great Lakes and Midwest Biblical Societies 12 (1992) 67-81.
"God in the Friend, or the Friend in God? The Meaning of Friendship for Augustine." Augustinian Heritage 38 (1992) 123-36.
"Romans 12:9-21 - A Brief Summary of the Problems of Translation and Interpretation." Irish Biblical Studies 14 (1992) 89-99.
"Cartesian Equations for Rectilinear Figures." Energeia (Fall 1987) 43-46.
TRANSLATIONS
Augustine's The Agreement of the Evangelists, The Soliloquies, and The Teacher. Brooklyn, NY: New City Press.
or
Have appeared in Religious Studies Review, Journal of Early Christian Studies,
Review of Biblical Literature, The Journal of Religion, Journal of Biblical Literature, and The Catholic Biblical Quarterly.