A Thinking Reed

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

Carl Braaten

  • Friday Links

    –Today is the Feast of the Annunciation; here are some thoughts on that. BLS also has one of her outstanding musical offerings for the day. –John Piper, theological nihilist? –Catholics are “more supportive of legal recognitions of same-sex relationships than members of any other Christian tradition and Americans overall.” –How to live without a mobile Read more

  • Sexuality, status confessionis, and the ELCA

    I see that Carl Braaten has issued yet another jeremiad against the ELCA. This one is in response to the recently-issued draft social statement on sexuality and the accompanying recommendations. There’s not much new there, with one important exception. Braaten has now decided that the controversy over the full inclusion of LGBT people in the Read more

  • Items of interest from the JLE

    From this month’s Journal of Lutheran Ethics: First, an article on the neglect of spiritual practices in the ELCA and how, if the church doesn’t offer pathways to intimacy with God, people will seek them elsewhere. I can definitely sympathize with this. As someone who (re)turned to Christian faith as a young(ish) adult I was Read more

  • Natural law, homosexuality and the ELCA

    Carl Braaten has published a spirited defense of natural law ethics at the Journal of Lutheran Ethics with which I’m in substantial agreement. I think that if natural law ethics didn’t exist we’d have to invent it, and that people who claim to be deriving their ethics solely from uniquely Christian principles have usually smuggled Read more

  • September reading notes

    Well, okay, the month isn’t over yet, but it sure is flying. Earlier I mentioned I was still working on Monbiot’s Heat. Well, I still am. Just haven’t been in the mood to read it. ‘Nuff said. Finished Jame’s Alison’s Raising Abel. I stand by my earlier claim that, while Alison has some absolutely brilliant Read more

  • Questions for Lutherans (and others)

    Thomas at Without Authority posted recently on the raison d’etre of Protestant denominations. He raised the idea, favored by Lutheran theologians like Jenson and Braaten that Lutheranism is, in essence, a reforming movement within the church catholic. My question, especially to Lutheran readers, is this: Do you still regard the gospel of justification by faith Read more

  • Justification and liberation

    Since the previous post on Braaten’s soteriology made it sound like he had a completely negative view of Liberation Theology, I thought I’d try to set out the position he sketches in his chapter on the Two Kingdoms principle, which tries to put liberation in the context of eschatology and the coming Kingdom of God. Read more

  • Hopeful Christocentric universalism

    I’ve been re-reading Carl Braaten’s Principles of Lutheran Theology – it’s really a good read and a great encapsulation of some classic Lutheran themes. One of the best chapters is the one on The Christocentric Principle. Here Braaten discusses the work of Christ and its implications. He recognizes that soteriology has fallen on hard times, Read more