Collected here are articles and reviews that have appeared in print, as well as a presentation of my books. There are a few interviews and some sound material, notably my reading of the Gospels in Greek, a project that remains work in progress.
In times hostile to faith, how does one calculate risk? How does one know when caution is called for, when intransigence?
Continue reading To publish a book is to launch it on a course of its own. The author looks on with wonder as it travels to unexpected places.
Continue reading The Church refuses to either absolutise or materialise eros and, in consequence, sexuality. That is, here and now, a counter-cultural position to assume, but the here and now will pass, the Christian vision of human nature endures.
Continue reading 'Bishops of the Lutheran Church of Norway are often criticised for meddling in politics, so one asks oneself: is the Catholic bishop also, now, trying to become more political?'.
Continue reading Rarely has literature been at the same time so embodied and so sublime. One thinks of that essential line from the Letter to the Ephesians - ‘anything exposed to the light becomes light’.
Continue reading After decades of determined inculturation, the time has come to exculturate ourselves somewhat, to be realigned round faith’s vertical axis, to recover our sense of the timeless, to seek God’s will in listening silence, to let our lives be refashioned by grace — why, to be converted.
Continue reading In a secular world, forgiveness seems absurd. Detached from the narrative that gives forgiveness meaning and allows it to inform shared experience, we revert to pre-Mosaic categories, that is, to the logic of Lamech - ‘If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.
Continue reading In a time when much academic writing is rushed, polished off quickly to meet the requirements of research assessments, it is good to encounter a text of patient gestation, in which words are weighed and in which, above all, the Word who is the object, not only of enquiry but of desire, is heard.
Continue reading Let us entrust ourselves to God’s freeing possession. Let us run the risk of freedom.
Continue reading Det offentlige er visst ikke i stand til, nå, å gjenkjenne gudstjeneste som noe kategorisk særegent, en form for adferd som fortjener særskilte tiltak, særskilt kreativitet. Vi har tapt en dimensjon av tilværelsen: Det transcendente er strøket fra offisielt ordforråd.
Continue reading