I started writing down favorite scriptures, quotes, and sayings in fifth or sixth grade. I taught children's Bible classes for 42 years and public school classes for 29 years and I always found a way to use many of the quotes and sayings in all my classes. I still get excited when I see a great quote in a book or magazine, or even on a T-shirt. I have four grandchildren I adore, and I don't get to see them as often as I did when they were children, or during the pandemic. Cale is a graduate of Oklahoma Christian University and is busy with his career. Mackenzie will be a senior at the University of Oklahoma. Tate is a newlywed and is attending the Oklahoma State University's Fire Academy to become a firefighter, and our youngest, Danny, is a 6'4" basketball player who will be a junior at Edmond Memorial High School. I found a quote a few years ago from the gymnast, Gabby Douglas. She said, "By now, you've probably caught on to something: my mother is always standing by with just the right scripture or inspirational saying to get me through any tough situation." I was so blessed to have my grandchildren living in the same town when they were growing up and all four of them were in my sixth grade Sunday school class. I think all of us who are grandmothers want to be like Timothy's grandmother, Lois. I read Gabby's quote and realized how important that was to her. I can't stand by my grandchildren, but I thought I can text scriptures and quotes to them. Also, Corrie ten Boom's book, The Hiding Place came out when my girls were babies. I read it during their nap times. I also watched as many of her interviews as I could. She and her family were Christians in Holland and hid hundreds of Jews being smuggled to safety in a secret hiding place in their combination home and watch and clock repair store. Her entire family was caught by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps. They weren't allowed Bibles, so they taught people using the scriptures they had memorized. I heard her tell a story of finding a broken piece of pencil and writing scriptures down on little scraps of paper and giving them to people to give them hope. That inspired me to memorize more scriptures, so I could always have a Bible close to me. I started texting scriptures and different quotes to my grandkids group once or twice a week. I prayed that this would keep them in the Word and remind them their words and actions need to glorify God. One night I needed to send a new text and it took me about thirty minutes to write one and send it. I remember thinking I wish I could go online or go to Mardel's store to find a book that had the type of devotionals I wanted. My next thought was why don't I write one. I'm retired and I already have over thirty devotionals finished. I could just add about a hundred more and I would have a book of devotionals. I said a prayer and started compiling my devotion "lesson plan" book the next day.

This volume, three separate books in one edition, is a collection of Josef Pieper's famous treatises on the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. Each of these treatises was originally published as a separate work over a period of thirty-seven years, and here they are brought together in English for the first time. The first of the three that he wrote, On Hope, was written in 1934 in response to the general feeling of despair of those times. His "philosophical treatise" on Faith was derived from a series of lectures he gave in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His most difficult work, one that he struggled with for years - and almost abandoned - was his work On Love. Pieper now feels that this is the most important book he has written. He discusses not only the theological virtue of caritas-agape, but also of eros, sexuality, and even "love" of music and wine.

"So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13 Faith, hope, and love—we hear a lot about each on their own, but how are they related? Why is this triad mentioned so often in the New Testament? Written in the form of fifty-eight questions and answers, this book reveals how these three theological virtues—also referred to as "three divine sisters"—together serve as the foundation for our whole Christian life. Deeply scriptural, steeped in key theological texts, and modeled after the classic catechisms of church history, this book will instruct our minds, stir our hearts, and motivate us to faith-filled obedience.

These essays consider the three traditional theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—alongside their opposites—doubt, despair, and hate, from a scholarly perspective. The volume includes contributions not just from philosophers of religion, but also from psychologists, sociologists, and film and literature scholars, to paint a complex and nuanced picture of these virtues, both of how we might understand them, and how we can hope to embody them ourselves. While these virtues make up a core part of the Christian tradition, the chapters here go far and wide in search of different cultural conceptions of these universal human concerns. Inquiries are made into these virtues within Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, and Islamic thought, alongside philosophers including Aristotle, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Levinas, and Murdoch. The resulting tapestry is often beautiful, sometimes horrific, but always thoroughly human. This text appeals to students and researchers working in these fields. Chapter [9] is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Is there a meaning in the Bible, or is meaning rather a matter of who is reading or of how one reads? Does Christian doctrine have anything to contribute to debates about interpretation, literary theory, and post modernity? These are questions of crucial importance for contemporary biblical studies and theology alike. Kevin Vanhoozer contends that the postmodern crisis in hermeneutics—”incredulity towards meaning,” a deep–set skepticism concerning the possibility of correct interpretation—is fundamentally a crisis in theology provoked by an inadequate view of God and by the announcement of God’s “death.” Part 1 examines the ways in which deconstruction and radical reader–response criticism “undo” the traditional concepts of author, text, and reading. Dr. Vanhoozer engages critically with the work of Derrida, Rorty, and Fish, among others, and demonstrates the detrimental influence of the postmodern “suspicion of hermeneutics” on biblical studies. In Part 2, Dr. Vanhoozer defends the concept of the author and the possibility of literary knowledge by drawing on the resources of Christian doctrine and by viewing meaning in terms of communicative action. He argues that there is a meaning in the text, that it can be known with relative adequacy, and that readers have a responsibility to do so by cultivating “interpretive virtues.” Successive chapters build on Trinitarian theology and speech act philosophy in order to treat the metaphysics, methodology, and morals of interpretation. From a Christian perspective, meaning and interpretation are ultimately grounded in God’s own communicative action in creation, in the canon, and preeminently in Christ. Prominent features in Part 2 include a new account of the author’s intention and of the literal sense, the reclaiming of the distinction between meaning and significance in terms of Word and Spirit, and the image of the reader as a disciple–martyr, whose vocation is to witness to something other than oneself. Is There a Meaning in This Text? guides the student toward greater confidence in the authority, clarity, and relevance of Scripture, and a well–reasoned expectation to understand accurately the message of the Bible. Is There a Meaning in This Text? is a comprehensive and creative analysis of current debates over biblical hermeneutics that draws on interdisciplinary resources, all coordinated by Christian theology. It makes a significant contribution to biblical interpretation that will be of interest to readers in a number of fields. The intention of the book is to revitalize and enlarge the concept of author–oriented interpretation and to restore confidence that readers of the Bible can reach understanding. The result is a major challenge to the central assumptions of postmodern biblical scholarship and a constructive alternative proposal—an Augustinian hermeneutic—that reinvigorates the notion of biblical authority and finds a new exegetical practice that recognizes the importance of both the reader’s situation and the literal sense.