Broken Signposts News Today

It is a reminder that most of us seek a deeper and richer understanding of the meaning and purpose of life

The Tablet Sixth in a series Reflecting back on my experience of my years of teaching philosophy, especially teaching about the mystery of the human person, I am very aware of how much my views of what it means to be a human person have changed. Lately because of what I am reading and teaching I am very aware of how much my view of freedom has changed. I was especially interested to learn what N.T. Wright would say in his chapter on freedom in his new book Broken Signposts: How Christianity Ma...

The Tablet Fifth in a series The late Father Andrew Greeley frequently expressed in print his view that beauty can draw us toward God. It can act like a sacrament revealing God to us and drawing us closer to the Infinite Beauty who God is. I never disagreed with Andy’s insight but I don’t think I ever gave it as much thought as I should have. Reading N.T. Wright’s Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the World (New York: HarperOne, 2020, pp.198, $27.90) has moved me to apprec...

The Tablet Fourth in a series One of the seven broken signposts that A.T. Wright studies in his new book Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the World (New York: HarperOne, 2020, $27.99) is spirituality. It is one of the seven signposts that Wright doesn’t think are working in the contemporary world and which he thinks can be healed by embracing the vision that St. John presents in his gospel. I smiled as I read the first couple of sentences in Wright’s chapter on spirituality...

The Tablet April 29, 2021 Painting titled “Saint John the Evangelist” by Domenichino (c. 1620s) Anyone who has ever read St. John’s gospel probably recalls that the gospel has some beautiful statements about love. What I found so exciting about N.T. Wright’s reflections on love in his book Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the World (HarperOne, 2020, pp. 198, $27.99) is Wright’s insistence that John’s gospel not only contains some beautiful insights into love ...

Ron Rolheiser column Week of April 11 2021 Whatever energy we don’t transform, we will transmit. That’s a phrase I first heard from Richard Rohr and it names a central challenge for all mature adults. Here’s its Christian expression. Central to our understanding of how we are saved by Jesus is a truth expressed by the phrase: Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. How are we saved through Jesus’ suffering? Obviously, that’s a metaphor. Jesus is not a sheep, so...

Desire of All Nations March 17, 2021 “I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory” (Haggai 2:9). In his recent apologetic/philosophical/biblical work  Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the World,[1] N. T. Wright argues that most common people and ordinary folks unconsciously and intuitively have universal yearnings or longings for realities and ideas of Love, Justice, Power, Beauty, Freedom, and Truth. He ca...

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash The concept behind Broken Signposts is both simple and challenging, old and new. In the most recent of his many books, the Anglican theologian and biblical scholar N. T. Wright—formerly bishop of Durham, now a professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews—takes us through seven universally preoccupying themes: justice, love, spirituality, beauty, freedom, truth and power. HarperOne   His premise is that each of these...