A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Books

  • The apocalyptic Jesus and the divine Christ

    Continuing the series on Dale Allison’s The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (previous posts here and here). Despite his defense of the general picture of Jesus offered in the gospels, Allison is not out just to comfort conservatives or other traditional believers. For starters, as we’ve seen, he’s dubious that we can determine with Read more

  • The real Jesus

    As we saw in the last post, Allison thinks that the traditional method of sifting the NT materials to reveal pristine, authentic bits of knowledge about Jesus is doomed to failure. More promising, he argued, is discerning the general picture of Jesus, based on recurring themes. For example, citing numerous passages in the synoptic gospels, Read more

  • Dale Allison on the limits of the quest for the historical Jesus

    Over the holiday I read Dale Allison Jr.’s The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Allison is a well-regarded historical Jesus scholar with a number of tomes to his name and a practicing Christian. This book is his attempt to come to terms with how his work as a historian affects his personal faith. As Read more

  • Incarnation and animal redemption

    I recently got my hands on an excellent anthology of essays–Creaturely Theology: God, Humans, and Other Animals, edited by Celia Deane-Drummond and David Clough. It brings together essays on history, theology, philosophy, and ethics to deepen the conversation about the place of animals in Christian theology and practice. So far I’ve only read a few Read more

  • A very kinky book

    The new book Superfreakonomics (sequel to the much-ballyhooed Freakonomics) hasn’t even been published yet, and it’s already receiving massive smack-downs for its highly misleading chapter on global warming. See Joseph Romm (here, here, and here) and Paul Krugman. Read more

  • “A severely conservative moral stance”

    James Rachels on vegetarianism: Vegetarianism is often regarded as an eccentric moral view, and it is assumed that a vegetarian must subscribe to principles at odds with common sense. But if this reasoning is sound, the opposite is true: the rule against causing unnecessary pain is the least eccentric of all moral principles, and that Read more

  • She Who Is wrap-up

    I’m not going to offer a blow-by-blow account of the rest of Elizabeth Johnson’s She Who Is, mostly because I don’t think I could do justice to the many nuances and illuminating insights it contains. It’s definitely changed how I think about these issues. Also, it’s a highly readable book for academic theology, and anyone Read more

  • Many names

    After discussing the role of experience–specifically women’s experience of affirming themselves as fully human and valued by God, equally created in the divine image–Elizabeth Johnson turns to the Bible and classical theology as sources for feminist theological discourse. It’s no secret that the Bible was written by men in patriarchal cultures and reflects the presuppositions Read more

  • Feminist conversion as a source of theological speech

    In part II of She Who Is, Elizabeth Johnson discusses the sources she’s going to use for her project of theological reconstruction, or as she puts it: “resources for emancipatory speech about God” (p. 61). These are women’s interpreted experience, the Bible, and classical theology. It’s hard not to be reminded of Hooker’s “three-legged stool” Read more

  • Addendum to previous post

    Something funky happened to that last post, and part of it got cut out. But in the version I originally wrote, I included on my list H. Richard Niebuhr’s Radical Monotheism and Western Culture. I posted a bit about it here. Read more