Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Books as Sources

“I have few of the aptitudes of the scholar, and fewer yet of the methodical habits and industry of the man of business. I live in books a certain part of each day, but less as a student of books than as a student of life. I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey. My memory for the facts and the arguments of books is poor, but my absorptive power is great. What I meet in life, in my walks, or in my travels, which is akin to me, or in the line of my interest and sympathies, that sticks to me like a bur, or, better than that, like the food I eat. So with books: what I get from them I do not carry in my memory, but it is absorbed as the air I breathe or the water I drink. It is rarely ready on my tongue or my pen, but makes itself felt in a much more subtle and indirect way.”

(Burroughs, John. “The Summit of Years” in “The Summit of Years” Volume 15 of The Writings of John Burroughs. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913; pages 5-6)

Burroughs recognizes his limitations. And in his use of books he notes that he gets inspiration from them but so transforms the content that it really does become his. This is what I hope happens with the books from which these “Commonplaces” come.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Christian scholarship

Note:
Christian scholarship could mean scholarship of Christian topics. Or it could mean scholarship carried out by Christians. Theodore Graebner here first means study of Christian subjects (Bible, church history, doctrine, etc.) as carried out by pastors — he was writing at a seminary to pastors and to future pastors — but he also means their scholarship of any subjects OR that by any other faithful people.

Quote:
“Christian scholarship is but organized and well-proportioned knowledge, imbued with lofty purpose and spiritual ideals. And to treat it as if a contrast existed between its acquisition and practical usefulness is in itself an indication of undisciplined thinking.” (p. 42)

“So comprehensive are the labors of the ministerial calling, and at so many points do they touch human life, that there is hardly conceivable a domain of human knowledge which may not contribute its quota to the efficiency of pastoral labor. This is, indeed, a wonderful thing.” (p. 44)

Source: Graebner, Theodore. The Pastor as Student and Literary Worker: Lectures Delivered at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Second, revised edition. St. Louis : Concordia Publishing House, 1925.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Breadth and variety in study

“There is no more effective means of keeping the mind fresh and its faculties at the height of their performance than the occupation, within proper limitations, with some side-line of study. When we inquire how it is that some men maintain even into old age a peculiar freshness of mind and true balance of mental faculties, here is the answer.”

From: Graebner, Theodore. The Pastor as Student and Literary Worker: Lectures Delivered at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Second, revised edition. St. Louis : Concordia Publishing House, 1925, page 68.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

a writer’s audience

“In my literary career I have escaped trying to write for the public or for editors; I have written for myself. I have not asked, ‘What does the public want?’ I have only asked, ‘What do I want to say? What is there in my heart craving for expression? What have I lived or felt or thought that is my own, and has its root in my inmost being?’ ”

Burroughs, John. The Writings of John Burroughs. 15 vols. The Riverby Edition. (Boston and NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1904-1913), Vol. 15, page 5.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

footnotes for the faithful

“The literary compositions of studious premodern Christians place much less emphasis upon authorship than do those of curious moderns. …. The literary works of the doctores ecclesiae are very often saturated with allusions to and echoes of Scripture and the works of their predecessors, many of them not marked in any way, but instead woven invisibly and indivisibly into the fabric of their own words. This lack of marking of alien words is often because the echoes and allusions are thought sufficiently obvious not to need marking….”

Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite : a Theological Grammar. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), page 182.