A Thinking Reed

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

Interfaith

  • Jews, Christians, and a “two-poled” eschatology

    I’ve read more than one work of theology that attempted to explain the rejection of Jesus’ messiah-hood by the majority of Jews like this: Jews expectated the messiah to be a nationalist–even military–leader who would liberate them from Roman oppression, but Jesus was a different kind of messiah, a “spiritual” one who came to liberate Read more

  • An example of the wrong approach to other religions

    I don’t mean to pick on this blog in particular, but this post exemplifies an all-too-common tendency of Christians to put an apologetic slant on their approach to non-Christian religions. The post purports to offer five reasons why “a thoughtful person would start their religious quest with Christianity,” and in a relatively short space it Read more

  • False equivalence

    Just for the record, Koran-burning and building Muslim community centers (or mosques) are not both unpleasant things we must “tolerate” for the sake of living in a free society. The former is an ugly, reactionary practice that, yes, must be tolerated, if people insist on doing it, for the sake of the First Amendment freedoms Read more

  • Dog bites man, John Milbank stirs up controversy

    John Milbank of “Radical Orthodoxy” fame always seems able to stir up controversy in the theo-blogosphere. The latest hullabaloo stems from an essay Milbank wrote for an Australian website that seems to endorse a romantic nostalgia for western colonialism (or as he puts it, “the lamentably premature collapse of the Western colonial empires”). That, and Read more

  • Guest in the House wrap-up

    Readers may have noticed that my posts on Williamson’s book haven’t been very critical. That’s in part because I think he’s right about a lot of things. But it has more to do with the fact that I was mainly trying to get clear in my own mind about what he’s saying. I think a Read more

  • Williamson on Christology

    A question that naturally arises for any Christian theology that attempts to recognize the ongoing reality of Jewish faith and life is What about Jesus? That is, do Christians need to sacrifice, or at least modify, their convictions about the uniqueness and salvific importance of Jesus in order to avoid supersessionism? In A Guest in Read more

  • Speak rightly of God

    I have one or two more posts on Williamson’s Guest in the House of Israel in the works, but if you’re interested in what I’ve been writing about so far you might want to check out this article–Speak Rightly of God: Clark M. Williamson as a Church Theologian–which provides an overview of his work. I Read more

  • Israel and the church: co-witnesses to the love and kingdom of God

    I’m not going to blog exhaustively about the remaining chapters in Clark Williamson’s A Guest in the House of Israel, where he applies the insights of a post-Holocaust theology to various topics (covenant, scripture, Christology, doctrine of God) with interesting results. What I thought I’d do instead is take a look at one area–the doctrine Read more

  • By what authority?

    After surveying the issue of anti-Judaism in Christian theology, Clark Williamson proposes some criteria for a post-Holocaust theology: – Beware of unchanged “pre-Shoah” theological statements (i.e., we need to apply a hermeneutic of suspicion to traditional formulations). – Do theology in conversation with Jews. – Say nothing that could not be said “in the presence Read more

  • What is Christian anti-Judaism?

    Brandon points out in a comment to this post that I haven’t really defined what Williamson means by “anti-Judaism.” So here goes. First, it’s distinguishable from, though obviously related to, anti-Semitism. Anti-Judaism refers more broadly to the notion that Christianity is superior to, completes, and/or replaces Judaism as an ongoing religious enterprise. Williamson’s argument is Read more