A Thinking Reed

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

Theology & Faith

  • The apocalyptic Jesus and the divine Christ

    Continuing the series on Dale Allison’s The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (previous posts here and here). Despite his defense of the general picture of Jesus offered in the gospels, Allison is not out just to comfort conservatives or other traditional believers. For starters, as we’ve seen, he’s dubious that we can determine with Read more

  • Manhattan evisceration

    If you’re lucky, you’ve been blissfully unaware of the recent Manhattan Declaration, a quasi-ecumenical “call of Christian conscience” signed by a veritable who’s who of right-wing ecclesiastical celebrities (largely overlapping with the First Things crowd). The basic gist is to reaffirm opposition to legal abortion and same-sex marriage as the paramount Christian principles, but wrapped Read more

  • The real Jesus

    As we saw in the last post, Allison thinks that the traditional method of sifting the NT materials to reveal pristine, authentic bits of knowledge about Jesus is doomed to failure. More promising, he argued, is discerning the general picture of Jesus, based on recurring themes. For example, citing numerous passages in the synoptic gospels, Read more

  • Dale Allison on the limits of the quest for the historical Jesus

    Over the holiday I read Dale Allison Jr.’s The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Allison is a well-regarded historical Jesus scholar with a number of tomes to his name and a practicing Christian. This book is his attempt to come to terms with how his work as a historian affects his personal faith. As Read more

  • Buddhist emptiness and Christian salvation

    Kristin Johnston Largen, a professor of theology at the Lutheran seminary at Gettysburg, has written a stimulating little book: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhism: Rethinking Salvation. In it she offers a summary of the key points of what Christianity and Buddhism mean by salvation and reflects on how Buddhist notions of salvation can shed Read more

  • Noah, climate change, and “assisted migration”

    In Celia Deane-Drummond and David Clough’s Creaturely Theology, Christopher Southgate expands on an idea he discussed briefly in his recent book The Groaning of Creation (see my posts here). Southgate points out that, due to human-caused climate change, we’re looking at a massive die off of animal life in the near future (what has been Read more

  • Quotes for Brother Martin’s birthday

    From Kim at Connexions: Happy birthday, Martin! Read more

  • Close encounters of the religious kind

    The Post had an article this morning on a conference being sponsored by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences on religious implications of the possible discovery of extra-terrestrial life. In principle, I’m not sure most the challenges posed by such a discovery would be all that different from ones we’re already used to. We’re already Read more

  • Incarnation and animal redemption

    I recently got my hands on an excellent anthology of essays–Creaturely Theology: God, Humans, and Other Animals, edited by Celia Deane-Drummond and David Clough. It brings together essays on history, theology, philosophy, and ethics to deepen the conversation about the place of animals in Christian theology and practice. So far I’ve only read a few Read more

  • A broad orthodoxy

    Pastor Robb (a.k.a. LutherPunk) recently asked how people defined orthodoxy. The question was raised in the context of the recent decisions of the ELCA church-wide assembly, as many traditionalists are now accusing the ELCA of lapsing into heresy. Interestingly, Robb got about as many different definitions of “orthodoxy” as he had commenters responding to his Read more