A Thinking Reed

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

Creation

  • Groaning of Creation: Index of posts

    Thought it might be helpful to have links to all my posts on Christopher Southgate’s book on animal theodicy, The Groaning of Creation, in one place. 1. Intro 2. The only way? 3. God so loved the world 4. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy 5. Heaven can wait 6. Priests of creation 7. The Read more

  • Radical faith and creation

    As my previous post may have suggested, I’ve been dipping into the greatest hits of H. Richard Niebuhr (Reinhold’s younger brother and no mean theologian himself). Right now I’m finishing up his Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, which I had read as an undergrad, and I remember it making an impression on me at the Read more

  • The end of the world as we know it (6): animals

    (Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Reflection on the ultimate destiny of animals has not been a central feature of Christian thinking about the eschaton. Most theology in general has been relentlessly anthropocentric, and eschatology as a general rule is no different. This is perhaps especially true of post-Enlightenment theology which, influenced by Cartesian Read more

  • The end of the world as we know it (5): New creation

    At the end of the previous post I wrote that Polkinghorne sees embodiment as essential to what it means to be human, partly because of the interrelatedness that is an intrinsic feature of all things. A self existing in isolation is, if not a contradiction in terms, at least living an extremely diminished and attenuated Read more

  • All theology is animal theology

    Christopher: Considering animals in relationship to God is not something extra or foreign to Christianity. In my opinion, a serious doctrine of Creation cannot ignore the rest of the living world and the Creation as a whole and finally be Christian. Even rocks glorify God. And frankly, neither can a complete doctrine of Redemption or 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

  • God’s glory is etched on his creation

    I’ve been reading this abridged Institutes of the Christian Religion that I referred to in the last post and liked this passage quite a bit: Since complete happiness is knowing God, in order that no one should be prevented from finding that happiness, he has kindly put in our minds the seed of true religion Read more

  • The Fall and natural evil revisited, pt. 2

    In the last post I expressed my unease with the notion of a cosmic fall, largely on the grounds that, for it to be radical enough to exculpate God from creating an order shot through with suffering, death, parasitism and predation it would risk creating a gulf between God and his creation. If fallen angels Read more

  • The Fall and natural evil revisited, pt. 1

    Eric tipped me off to a great new theology blog, Ipsum Esse, written by a Catholic layman, David Walsh. David recently had two posts that generated some good discussion, one on evolution and the other on the idea of a “cosmic fall.” Longtime ATR readers will know that these are topics near and dear to Read more