A Thinking Reed

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

Books

  • Jesus Our Redeemer

    Gerald O’Collins, S.J. is an Australian Jesuit who’s taught at Gregorian University in Rome since the 70s. I greatly enjoyed his book on the Trinity (and blogged a bit about it here), so was pleased to discover that early this year he published Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation in which O’Collins offers Read more

  • Beyond antrhopocentrism and misanthropy

    I’ve been reading a short collection of essays by Wendell Berry called Another Turn of the Crank. I’m not ready to sign on to Berry’s agrarian vision, but I do think he makes some important observations. In an essay called “The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity,” he points out that much of Read more

  • D.M. Baillie on the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith

    This weekend I re-read Donald Baillie‘s brief book God Was In Christ. Though originally published in 1948 it still strikes me as fresh and contemporary, not least in the way that it treats the problem of the “historical Jesus” and/vs. the “Christ of Faith.” Baillie is waging a two-front war here. On the one side Read more

  • The thirsty God

    This book I’m reading by Stephen Cottrell is really terrific. It’s part theology, part mediation, part devotional, and incorporates a section on Christian practice into each chapter, connecting the meditation on Christ’s cross with Lenten practices like fasting, almsgiving, Bible reading, prayer, etc. (which really are just Christian practices). He takes the passion according to Read more

  • JPII and Gerhard Forde on the Scandal of the Cross

    I have this feeling that I’ve posted on this before at the old blog, but I was flipping through Pope John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope this weekend, and found him to have some illuminating things to say about the mystery of the Cross. The book is written in a kind of Q&A Read more

  • Cur deus leo

    Elliot has a really cool post on understanding the Atonement through Science Fiction and Fantasy stories. Of course his imagined disputants don’t seem to be any better at reaching consensus than existing theologians… Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 10

    Faced with the need for some kind of satisfaction for sin, Anselm deduces that “If it be necessary, therefore, as it appears, that the heavenly kingdom be made up of men, and this cannot be effected unless the aforesaid satisfaction be made, which none but God can make and none but man ought to make, Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 9

    Okay, the argument so far: Anselm has contended that humankind has fallen into sin by failing to render to God the honor due him (i.e. obedience). As a result we threaten to fail to acheive God’s intended purpose for us, namely, being part of the “celestial estate” and consequently we disrupt the order and beauty Read more

  • Children of Men

    Warning: spoilers ahoy! When I first read P.D. James’s Children of Men back in January I wondered how in the world they’d managed to make a Hollywood movie out of it. After all, here’s a book where the heroes are a band of Christian terrorists, the villain is an overweening government that subsidizes euthanasia, and Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 8

    Anselm spends the balance of Book One trying to defend the following argument: [I]f it is unfitting for God to elevate man with any stain upon him, to that for which he made him free from all stain, lest it should seem that God had repented of his good intent, or was unable to accomplish Read more