I’m JT. This is a site where I write about Jesus Christ, the Bible, the Church, and things that are related to Jesus Christ and the Bible and the Church. I’ve put those writings in the five broad categories listed above:
1. Church and Liturgy: NB. church politics are filed here, not in category #2, and sacramental theology is posted here rather than in category #4, since its natural home is the church.
2. Culture and Politics: You’ll be pleased to know that very little finds its way to this heading.
3. Discipleship and Ministry: These are the posts that deal with the day-to-day of the Christian life, along with reflections on the what and the how of serving Jesus and his Church.
4. Scripture and Theology: Pretty much everything on the blog has some sort of theological angle, but these are the posts that are particularly engaging with theological and scriptural questions in a slightly more abstract way.
5. Sermons and Talks: Here you’ll find anything that found its first life in my preaching. It’s a greatest hits collection (in my humble opinion), but, being written for other contexts, might have been better heard than read. Places and names have been changed, but I hope there is some benefit to be found in these, as I hope they edified their first hearers.
Under top picks you’ll find the posts that I think are either my best, or, failing that, at least the most foundational to the way that I approach and think through other issues. Everything in top picks is also filed under one of the other five headings.
The blog has been through a few names. Once it was called ‘Exegetical Pharisees’, which I thought was a very clever reference to a Don Carson book. I was going to write about exegesis and set my corner of the church right in its occasionally overly-narrow biblical interpretation.
Then is was called ‘Creed Thoughts’, which was a less clever reference to the US version of the Office. I wouldn’t blog about the creeds as such, but I hoped I would write things that anyone who believed the creeds might enjoy.
Now it’s called ‘My Back Pages’, which is a reference to a Bob Dylan song about how sometimes we have such high hopes when we’re young and think we know everything, but then we find that the more we know, the more we know we don’t know. So please, dear reader, take anything you find here in that spirit. Feel free to get in touch about anything here — I’m happy to discuss, revise, and sharpen these thoughts.
Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now
My Back Pages 