This is the final post in a three-part series on the mortal human body in two classic works of literature: Homer’s Iliad and Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Though the topic may seem morbid, …| joshuamcnall.com
In the last post, I explored what might seem like an oddity in the greatest war story ever told: Homer’s Iliad. In the epic, the most intense conflicts center not on killing enemies or conquering t…| joshuamcnall.com
1 post published by joshuamcnall during August 2025| joshuamcnall.com
One of my summer reads this year was a slow journey through Homer’s Iliad—the great archetype of our war stories, action movies, and (in a way) superhero universes. Among other insights, I was stru…| joshuamcnall.com
After my sermon last Sunday, a friend asked, “How many books do you read per week?” Surprisingly, the answer is usually “less than one.” To be sure, I read daily: Scripture and academic works in th…| joshuamcnall.com
All summer, I’ve been chipping away at my next book, which is a practical exploration of a single pregnant verse of Scripture: Micah 6:8. He has told you, O mortal, what is good;and what does the LORD require of youbut to do justice, and to love kindness,and to walk humbly with your God? After mulling … Continue reading You can’t think your way out→| joshuamcnall.com
In the last post, I examined what I take to be a common false assumption in some Christian circles: namely, that all sins are equal in the sight of God. While acknowledging the gravity and pervasiveness of sin, my reasons for rejecting the myth were fourfold: Since the prior post focused on points 1 and … Continue reading Are all sins equal before God? (part 2)→| joshuamcnall.com
There’s a scene near the end of Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan in which Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) finally locates the long-lost James Francis Ryan (played by a young Matt Damon). Damon’s character is in shock, after learning that his three brothers have been killed in action. After years apart, he struggles to visualize their … Continue reading The right kind of secrets→| joshuamcnall.com
A common refrain these days in (Christian) higher ed goes like this, “We must remember, students are our customers.” The logic runs as follows: To be fair, I’m sympathetic to parts of the argument. And its intention can be good. It’s absolutely right to say that universities must continually evaluate whether they are caring for … Continue reading Are students customers?→| joshuamcnall.com
A bombshell landed on the literary world last year after the death of Cormac McCarthy, the man who had been, arguably, America’s greatest living novelist. The shock was not McCarthy’s passing (he was 89), but a Vanity Fair article by Vincenzo Barney that broke news of a nearly fifty-year relationship with a woman named Augusta … Continue reading While his characters were getting better (a cautionary tale)→| joshuamcnall.com
“Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.” William Zinsser penned that line in On Writing Well, but it resonates for anyone who’s had to endure a meeting or press release filled with what I affectionately call “corporate word vomit”—that is, recycled managerial euphemisms designed to mask bad news beneath a … Continue reading Against Corporate Word Vomit→| joshuamcnall.com
In-keeping with my claim that reading is rereading, I spent an evening recently flipping through Alan Jacobs’ excellent book, The Year of our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an age of Crisis. He n…| joshuamcnall.com
Personal website of Dr. Josh McNall | Reflections on Theology + Culture| joshuamcnall.com
About once a year in my theology or Bible classes, a student will say something like the following: “But as we know, all sins are equal in God’s sight.” In response, I’ll often ask: “How do we know…| joshuamcnall.com
