Some new books of interest in our library:

From two volume set, The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000-1650: An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization (Greenwood Press), under the entry “uniforms”:

“Outside Europe, uniform military dress was more common in this period. Boys inducted into the Janissary Corps, for instance, dressed in all red, including red caps. Fully trained Janissaries wore an exclusive white felt cap called a “Bork” which distinguished them on the battlefield. The Bork had wooden spoon attached, in line with nearly all unit symbolism in a corps where even officer ranks and titles expressed a culinary motif rooted in ritual meal sharing…” 2:886.

The Oxford History of Western Art, ed. Martin Kemp (OUP). From Greece and Rome to Postmodernism, this beautiful collection contains it all. Come, join the throngs of contemporary gnostics looking for hidden symbolism in the world’s great works of art. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of fodder for another book best-selling thriller. Just what was Durer trying to say with his 1525 Dream Vision? If only he would have told us… [Hint: he did.]

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For those of you who prefer to surf the internet and read your blogs via a mobile device (I can’t seem to get along anymore with my iPaq), you will be glad to know that CommonPlaces.org now automatically detects whether you are viewing the site with a mobile browser and renders the content in a more compatible way.

Try it and let me know what you think. Also, please report any bugs!

Anyone know of a mobile RSS aggregator that I recommend to my readers? Why view the site in mobile format when you can just subscribe to the RSS feed?

If you are worried that this newfangled feature will change the content of this blog, never fear. I only need to remind you that Jethro once ordered parts from a catalog and built an Oldsmobile hotrod in the 1968 season of The Beverly Hillbillies – and yet remained a hillbilly.

Did I really just post that?

You may also notice the calendar in the sidebar is gone and has been replaced by a list of most popular posts. Yes, I’ve been playing with plug-ins again. Kudos to Alex King, the developer of both.

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Sorry for the lapse in posting. I’ve been redesigning my other site, and with the holidays and all…

I have unusual books to highlight – all of which are new acquisitions in our library and are intended to help improve our weak art history holdings. Why does a theological library want to acquire works on the history of art? Well, because they serve as a visual representation of church history and even historical theology and biblical interpretation.

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Adelheid M. Gealt and George Knox. Domenico Tiepolo: A New Testament. Bloomington: Indiana University Art Museum and Indiana University Press, 2006.
This is the first collected presentation of 313 drawings of scenes from the New Testament by 18th Century Venetian artist Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804). When Domenico died, the drawings were dispersed among various purchasers. The authors have hunted them down and collected them for us here. This book will accompany an exhibition of many of the original drawings at The Frisk Collection in New York.

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Alessandro Scafi. Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
The first book to show how heaven has been expressed in cartographical form throughout the last 2000 years, this book claims to reveal how thought about heaven has developed over the centuries. Illustrated with more than 190 historic maps and drawings. Scafi touches on the nature of faith, theology, reason, and philosophy.

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Corinna Rossi. The treasures of the Monastery of Saint Catherine. [text by Corinna Rossi; photographs by Araldo de Luca; foreword by Archbishop Damianos of Sinai; translation by Jay Jaseph Hyams]. Vercelli, Italy : White Star ; [New York : Distributed in US and Canada by Rizzoli International], 2006.
Simply a fascinating history of the Monastery of St. Catherine, a monastery founded in the 5th Century when the mother of Constantine funded its establishment on what was believed to be the original site of the burning bursh, this book is beautiful if nothing else. The monastery it chronicles is (I think) a Greek Orthodox monastery, and houses artwork, artifacts, and a library of texts that is second only to the Vatican (does the Codex Sinaiaticus sound familiar?). A fascinating pictorial chronicle of a very odd, but historically important, place.

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I used to be cool. I drove a Fiat Spider. I rode bulls. I had an earring.

Now I have a minivan. And reflux.

But I’m on my way back to being cool. I’m starting library school next month. Really. I’m convinced that librarians have been given a bad rap. I am convinced that being a librarian is really a hip profession (seminary students: read “ministry”), cutting-edge, and under-rated. Especially now. Library school is no longer just about dewey and cataloging. It’s about emerging technologies, information architecture, and well, cataloging. But that’s okay — librarians are cool.

That’s probably why Noah Wyle left the popular and cool tv show, ER, and is now starring in a movie series called “The Librarian.” The first sequel comes out next month.

Who knew? I expect some things to become cool again – the return of denim jackets, Mystery Science Theater, Fiat Spiders. But librarians? That was about as expected as would be the return of leg-warmers.

The truth is, I thoroughly enjoy what I do. In this context it is indeed a ministry – helping to train ministers of the Gospel for more faithful service. I love what I do. And I get to be cool again.

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Librarians are a funny group. We like to think that we can remain objective, provide services and assistance to patrons without bias or persuasion, and often such is indeed the case. A recent visitor to the library who had not been on campus since he graduated twenty-five years ago received thirty minutes of unprompted, courteous, attentive assistance.

But I have not come to this library to merely be a finding aid for the community. Though I am eager to be such when necessary, my desire to return to my alma mater was motivated not so much by the opportunity to serve the collection and steward the massive silos of information. I can do that at many libraries, and would enjoy it. My desire, however, was to do that here — to serve this seminary by serving this library.

I love this place. Or perhaps I should rather say, “I love these people.” Or perhaps even more accurately, “I love this ministry.”

This ministry is unique. It is academic, and yet pastoral. It is random, and yet intentional. It is pedagogical, and yet studious. It is old, and yet new. It is where I am to be. It is where I have peace (Col. 3:15). But more that all that, it is where my purpose in ministry is aligned with others who have the same purpose.

When I first entered “vocational Christian ministry” (oh how I hate that term!), I did so out of the desire to disciple others as I had been discipled. The powerful percent. The ministry of multiplication. StuMo. “Those things which I have taught to you in the presence of many witnesses, teach to faithful men who will be able to teach others also,” 2 Timothy 2:2.

I came to seminary and studied. I learned. I learned in order to teach. I learned that learning and teaching are in vain unless accompanied by practice (props to Hermann Witsius, “On the Character of a True Theologian”). So I graduated and went to pastor.

But I grew most while at this seminary. Most students do.

A few years after graudation, my mentor in ministry encouraged me to be “strategic” in my thinking — where could I most strategically minister and impact the most strategic group of people? This struck a chord with me given the whole StuMo, powerful percent background to my spiritual formation. And yet I found myself comfortably pastoring a comfortable church. A beautiful house by a beautiful lake. A godly and growing group of elders. Do they need me? Where could I be more “strategically” placed? Lord, forgive me for my pride.

I send an email. A position opens. I receive a phone call. The moving truck comes.

And now I am back at a place which is sentimental to me, where the purpose is to invest in those who will also invest in others — to saturate future pastors with a God-glorifying, Christ-centered love for Him, and a passion for healthy believers in healthy churches.

I do not pretend to have the influence that the teaching faculty have. Nor do I want it. Just give me a few eager students who ask, “Where can I find more information on …”

I picture this seminarian — who sits at the feet of godly instructors in class, and now through my ministry will sit at the feet of godly instructors in print — teaching and preaching the fruit of his study of God, His Word, and His Gospel to congregations of families and neighbors. What a blessing to be the pointer finger in body of Christ.

So I am a theological librarian. But I am such not for the books. I am such for the Church.

So to all who have made this ministry possible for me, thank you. I love what I do. May God find me faithful in it.

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In a somewhat tardy observance of Reformation Day (Oct. 31, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Door, thus marking the traditional beginning to the European Reformations), I pass on to you the Reformation Polka.

I no longer live in an area saturated by German Lutherans and Catholics, so I feel like I can post this without much pastoral consequence.

Umpah.

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Some more new acquisitions of interest:

Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Given the centrality of the eucharistic debate among the Reformers, the author seeks to compare and contrast Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic views as understood in the XVI Century. The author is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and has published previously on Zwinglian theology and Zurich history.

Uuras Saarnivaara, Luther Discovers the Gospel: New Light upon Luther’s Way from Medieval Catholicism to Evangelical Faith (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2005). This is a new English translation of a work originally written in Finnish in 1943, and published in Helsinki, Finland, in 1947. It looks at the influence of Augustine, Staupitz, and Scripture on the development of Luther’s thought on justification up to the end of 1518.

Michael J. Colacurcio,

Godly Letters: The Literature of the American Puritans (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). I have not yet had opportunity to look much at this volume, so if any of you have input, feel free to comment. The TOC indicates the the author focuses particularly on Bradford, Shepard, Hooker, and Johnson. I look forward to the epilogue: “God’s Altar”: The Fall to Poetry. The author is professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Michael Wheeler,

The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). From the introduction: “Divisions between Catholics and Protestants have been a feature of English history since the Reformation. Even into the industrial nineteenth century, age-old theological disagreements were the cause of religious and cultural conflicts. [This book] asks why these ancient divisions were so deep, why they continued into the nineteenth century, and how novelists and poets, theologians and preachers, historians and essayists reinterpreted the religious debates.” Hmmm…

Popularity: 9% [?]

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The BiblioTech Web blog, a helpful place to stay up-to-date on how technology is changing libraries, has posted this :

Okay, so the idea is perhaps valuable. But it won’t fly for the mere reason of its name: “citizendium?” Clever, but not helpful. Thanks, Jason, for pointing this out to me.

Kudos, by the way, to Scott Pfitzinger who runs the BiblioTech Web site for keeping me informed on the intersection of librarianship and really cool technology.

Your thoughts on Citizendium, my dear readers? Will it work? Is it worth it? is it possible to have such a project with the same authority as a reputable print series? Pros? Cons?

Popularity: 14% [?]

From the Oxford Journals mailer:

Ph.D. in Literature Program University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, USA Interested in languages and literatures? Intellectually creative? Want curricular flexibility? Foreign study? Summers abroad? Intercultural, transnational, multi-linguistic. Five years full funding — tuition and stipend.

The University of Notre Dame invites you to apply to its innovative interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in literatures and Languages. Application deadline: 15 January 2006.

For Admissions, Fellowship and Program information,

please visit here.

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