A Thinking Reed

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

Books

  • H.R. Niebuhr on revelation, ethics, and nature

    For Niebuhr, revelation is not a revelation of divinely inspired propositions–as some theories of biblical inerrancy would have it. Instead, it is a fundamentally personal encounter–a revelation of God’s self. In this encounter, we don’t apprehend an object; it is more accurate to say that we are apprehended by–in judgment and love–the ultimate Subject. But Read more

  • H.R. Niebuhr’s principles

    In the preface to his The Meaning of Revelation, H. Richard Niebuhr outlines three convictions that he says underlie his argument: –self-defense is the most prevalent source of error in all thinking and perhaps especially in theology and ethics; –the greatest source of evil in life is the absolutizing of the relative, which in Christianity Read more

  • John Wesley on slavery and human rights

    I’ve been reading Theodore Runyon’s The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today, which aims to offer a synoptic account of Wesley’s thought and its relevance for the contemporary church. As the title suggests, Runyon argues that the notion of the renewal of creation is key to understanding Wesley’s theology. Specifically, it refers to the renewal Read more

  • From religious diversity to “confessional pluralism”

    In the final chapter of The Many Faces of Christology, Tyron Inbody looks at the issue of religious diversity. He considers the standard responses–exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism–but finds them wanting for familiar reasons. Exclusivism, in addition to resting on a questionable and selective interpretation of the biblical witness, greatly exacerbates the problem of evil by Read more

  • “Are you the one who is to come?”

    Tyron Inbody has a very interesting chapter on Christianity and Judaism in his Many Faces of Christology. With “post-Holocaust” theologies, he notes that the contention between Judaism and Christianity isn’t over Jesus’s teachings–which scholars now believe fell largely within the parameters of 1st-century Pharisaic Judaism. Nor is it over his death–which was not the fault Read more

  • Christology and worries about “theosis”

    I’m reading Tyron L. Inbody’s The Many Faces of Christology, and while this isn’t a direct comment on the book, it is inspired by something he writes about. In discussing the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries, Inbody emphasizes that these were about soteriology first and foremost. All the seemingly esoteric talk about Read more

  • The miracle of King James’ Bible

    Here is the miracle of the King James Bible in action. Words from a doubly alien culture, not an original text but a translation of ancient Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, made centuries ago and thousands of miles away, arrive in a dusty corner of the New World and sound as they were meant to—majestic but Read more

  • 25 books every Christian should read(?)

    That is, according to a book recently published by Harper under the auspices of Renovare, the evangelical-ish spiritual renewal movement. (Actually, since this book has the list, aren’t there 26 books every Christian should read? Seems like some sort of paradox there…) In any event, here’s the list, with titles I’ve read in bold. An Read more

  • The Common English Bible–a new translation

    My dear wife got me an Amazon Kindle for my birthday, which I’ve been enjoying immensely. Poking around in the Kindle store, I decided I should download a version of the Bible. But which one? I usually read either the New Revised Standard Version or the Revised English Bible. But the Kindle version of the Read more

  • The “stupidity” of closing libraries

    If you really want complete freedom of choice, complete openness of information, where nobody is spying on you, no one is selling your presence to advertisers, the only place to find it is a library, where they keep books. –Author Philip Pullman, “declaring war” against library closures in the UK (Via Alan Jacobs) Read more